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Fetchnotes Wants to Get Your "To Do" List Out of Your Head

Drake Martinet — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:00:30 +0000

You’re walking around out in the world and an idea strikes you. How do you best trap that random neuron and save it for later?

Fetchnotes, a small start-up out of Ann Arbor, Mich., is hoping to be your answer to those pesky, brain-leaking notes.

The service, still in closed beta, is pretty simple thus far. Basically, users register for an account and then are allowed to text a note to a special phone number.

The notes are saved on the Fetchnotes Web app, where they can be “auto-organized at the point of capture,” said Fetchnotes co-founder Alex Schiff.

The notes are arranged based on hashtags inserted in the notes themselves, and will eventually be automatically available for sharing using Twitterlike @ symbols.

But, according to Schiff, tomorrow’s Fetchnotes will look a lot different than today’s.

“We’ve only built in about 10 percent of the functionality we want,” he said. “The goal is to be able to get notes into Fetchnotes any way you want.”

Next, he said, the start-up will add the ability to call in notes, instant-message them via tools such as Google Chat, and link notes with dates in them right into Google Calendar.

It’s a pretty ambitious road map for a bootstrapped start-up outside Silicon Valley — although less so, when you consider that all of the things Fetchnotes hopes to loop together are really just hooks into everyone else’s APIs.

When I asked about competitors in the space — and there are a lot — Schiff was quick to address the elephant in the room: Evernote, which currently dominates the mobile memory space.

Schiff said that while Evernote wants to be your digital memory, Fetchnotes wants to be how you commit things to memory.

“In Evernote, it takes 12 steps to add a note with a tag on their mobile apps,” said Schiff. “That’s too much for short things.”

Fetchnotes came out of a collaboration between Schiff and Chase Lee — both juniors at the University of Michigan’s start-up incubator, called TechArb.

The team is now nearly 10, and Schiff said the company isn’t yet interested in taking money, although it has been approached.

The big question about these sorts of memory-helpers has to do with the battle between native tools and the cross-platformers.

Apple recently added the Reminders app, with its iOS 5 release, to the creatively-named Notes app that has shipped with every iPhone since the start.

Clearly, there is some mindshare they are after — enough to warrant the famously target-specific Apple building another OEM app.

The other side of this niche market includes services like Evernote, which try to be as cross-platform as possible, and collect everything into the cloud, where, theoretically, it will be safe.

Schiff’s company comes down in the Evernote camp, but he said he sees his real competition as “native apps like Notes, and more ‘lifehack’ stuff, like emailing yourself.”

I will add that the API-powered note-taking idea isn’t a new one. In fact, it’s nearly a demo product for what is possible with Internet telephony-based APIs. In fact, Fetchnotes is currently powered by an Internet telephony-via-API service.

Schiff and Fetchnotes may not be the only way forward, but light, fast, feature-oriented companies like his make a compelling argument for competing with the big boys by adding even more ease of use.

Here is a video I did with the Fetchnotes team:

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple Analysts: Screw Everything, Everything, We're Doing $550

John Paczkowski — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:00:25 +0000

Evidently a 78 percent net income increase in Apple’s fiscal first quarter was all it took for the market to put aside concerns about CEO Steve Jobs’s indefinite medical leave. Analysts following the company–who, it should be noted, did a pretty lousy job of predicting Apple’s latest financials–issued a fusillade of bullish notes celebrating the company’s leviathan quarter and raising their guidance for the year ahead.

As Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner said in a note raising his target price on the company’s shares to $425, “It’s no surprise when Apple tops expectations, but it’s fairly rare to see it trounce Street’s targets on almost every line. Bottom line: big as Apple is, it shows no sign of slowing, not with the Verizon iPhone launching in 2Q11 and China growth accelerating to 400% year-over-year.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster raised his price target to $483 from $438, observing in a research note that this quarter was the first in three years in which Apple issued EPS guidance above Street consensus (10 percent ahead of the Street). “Apple’s vision for itself as a mobile device company has come to fruition,” he said. “[The company] guided the March quarter more aggressively than it typically guides the out quarter relative to the Street. We see this as sign that it is bullish on the prospect of the iPhone at Verizon.”

At Deutsche Bank, Chris Whitmore slapped a price target of $440 on AAPL. “Apple continues to show impressive growth despite its size and is well positioned to benefit from the confluence of three major product cycles, namely: iPad, Macs and iPhone,” he told clients. “These product cycles coupled with greater geographic expansion (Verizon iPhone, iPad 2, iPhone 5, China expansion, Carrier deals) increases our confidence in AAPL’s ability to continue to outperform.”

At Barclays, Ben Reitzes raised his target to $450 from $420 to account for higher unit sales across Apple’s product portfolio. His take on Q1: “This very strong quarterly report left no holes to punch in the fundamental story. We believe the above-consensus revenue and EPS guidance and new products to come bring potential for further upside. We continue to believe the company is in very capable hands with COO Tim Cook and the rest of the team.”

Raising his price target to $450 from $430, Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope said essentially the same thing. “While the news of Steve Jobs’ medical leave may continue to add some headwinds to the share price momentum in the near-term, we continue to believe improving underlying fundamentals and the strength of Apple’s overall management team will counter this uncertainty. In addition to the strength of the December quarter and the recent Verizon iPhone release, we believe the next-gen iPad launch and the June iPhone refresh will serve as critical catalysts in the first half of 2011.”

UBS analyst Maynard Um ratcheted his price target up to $465 from $415, predicting what “could be the largest pre-order & sales ever experienced by Verizon Wireless for the iPhone” and continued success for the iPad. Said Um, “Though there has been increasing concern with regard to ramping competition, we see Apple’s ecosystem and ease of use as offering a more compelling value proposition than its competitors today and expect its tablet market share to more closely match its iPod market share in the mp3 player market rather than its share in the more fragmented smartphone market.”

And, finally, there was Ticonderoga’s Brian White, who took a “F@&k Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades” approach and raised his target price to a staggering $550. That’s about 60 percent higher than the price Apple shares have been trading at recently, a target that if the company were to hit, would value it at $506.6 billion. Said White, “Despite Monday’s news regarding Steve Jobs’s medical leave of absence, we believe it will be difficult to keep Apple’s stock from reaching new highs given the much stronger than expected quarter and outlook reported by the company.”

Bullish, or another word with a lot of the same letters? Hard to say. But as you weigh that question, remember this: This is the 33rd consecutive quarter in which Apple has beaten estimates. And this time it beat them by $2 billion.

Amazon Brings the Kindle App to Windows Phone 7

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:06:50 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle app now works on at least 11 different platforms with the addition of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 today. The apps allow you to start an e-book on one platform and then continue reading it where you left off on another. Features include the ability to synch bookmarks, notes and highlights. Yesterday, Amazon also confirmed that in addition to supporting the iPad, it will tailor the apps for upcoming Android and Windows-based tablet computers. At this point, it’s clear Amazon sees value in supporting all platforms. Rather than be discriminating, it’s trying to sell as many books as it can on as many platforms as a customer may want to read them.

Kno Prices Its Student Tablets at $599 and $899 to Ship by End of the Year

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:00:01 +0000

Kno, the high-profile Silicon Valley start-up trying to jump-start a market for tablets focused on students, announced tonight that it will have a limited number available by the end of the year for sale at prices of $599 and $899.

The lower price is for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version is more expensive.

Kno would not say exactly how many it has ordered for its first tablet production run–the device is being built by China’s Foxconn–but co-founder and CEO Osman Rashid said in an interview earlier today with BoomTown that units would number “in the thousands.”

Rashid said the Kno tablet will initially be aimed at 10 college campuses across the U.S., although he also declined to name them.

“We are going to do online and offline marketing, in a very focused approach,” he said, noting that Kno would be working with some college bookstores too.

Marketing a new and complex product like the Kno will take a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Kno recently raised another $46 million in funding to add to a $10 million round, and sources said that the Santa Clara, Calif., company could be back out raising even more early next year.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Kno’s Rashid said his company pushed the go button after getting good feedback from students in a beta test, half of whom used the single-screen device and the other half the two screens, along with its related education platform software.

“We found that 85 percent of those using the single screen wanted the dual-screen version and that those using two screens took three times more notes,” said Rashid. “Students said they love the fact that they can write in the textbook itself and it appears the way it needs to be, even in digital form.”

The first Kno will have an aluminum body, and the company will also offer a set of accessories, such as a cover and a stand.

And Kno will watch initial sales carefully. “As a start-up, we want to make sure we are meeting demand, but also that we roll it out in a careful approach,” said Rashid.

Indeed–and it will be interesting to see how that goes for the ambitious and innovative Kno.

Until the results are in, here is the official press release from Kno:

Kno Announces Pricing and Pre-Order Availability for Tablet Textbook; Pays for Itself in 3 Semesters

Delivers Significant Student Impact for Less than 1% the Cost of a 4-Year College Education

Santa Clara, CA–November 9, 2010–Kno, Inc., a powerful, groundbreaking tablet textbook designed specifically for students and the education market, today revealed the price of its 14.1 inch single and dual-screen tablets at $599 and $899, respectively. The company also announced that it is now accepting a limited number of pre-orders for an initial shipment that is expected to be on customers’ doorsteps by the end of the year.

“Kno’s extraordinary benefits represent only a tiny fraction of the overall cost of college, but its impact on the student’s career–and the energy it adds to the experience, the thrill of learning, and the ultimate grade–is dramatic,” said Osman Rashid, Co-Founder and CEO of Kno, Inc. “Even better, when you do the math, it actually pays for itself and still saves $1,300 in digital textbook costs.”

Kno has been beta-testing the product with students and the response has been overwhelmingly positive for both the single and dual screen devices. Far more than just a digital textbook, Kno is creating a powerfully effective new learning environment that will make students at all levels more successful at processing, grasping and retaining both facts and concepts.

“My experience with Kno has been really incredible. My books have become more interactive and the ability to hand-write electronic notes on the book pages themselves has changed how I retain information,” said Melissa Lin, a sophomore majoring in Biology at UC Berkeley that has been beta-testing the Kno tablet. “I see a ton of difference with the Kno. I can carry everything with me including my books, my notebooks and a browser for research. And, with the lower cost of digital textbooks, it will pay for itself in three semesters which is really great.”

Digital textbooks, which typically cost between 30 and 50 percent less than physical textbooks, will be priced separately and will be sold through the Kno bookstore, which will be accessible on every Kno device. Starting today, students will be able to browse Kno’s bookstore at www.kno.com/store/books, which will include tens of thousands of the most popular textbooks and supplement materials. Kno has previously announced that it is working with major textbook publishers including Cengage, McGraw Hill and Pearson. The company recently added publishers including Macmillan, Bedford, Freeman & Worth and Holtzbrinck as well as BarCharts Publishing, Kaplan, Random House and a large number of the University Presses.

“According to the not-for-profit College Board’s 2010 report, the average college student spends approximately $1,100 a year on book and supplies,” said Babur Habib, CTO and Co-Founder of Kno, Inc. “Kno can reduce that cost while bringing education into the 21st Century, providing students with a far superior learning experience than they have today.”

To learn more about Kno, please visit the Kno blog at http://blog.kno.com or visit us on Facebook www.facebook.com/GoodtoKNO, Twitter www.twitter.com/GoodtoKNO and YouTube www.youtube.com/GoodtoKNO.

Apple Shares: "A Magical and Revolutionary Product at an Unbelievable Price"

John Paczkowski — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:43:00 +0000

“After the big run, what’s next? The big run.”

So begins a research note from RBC analyst Mike Abramsky that’s a good representation of the market’s reaction to Apple’s latest blow-the-roof-off-the-sucker quarter.

The 90 percent spike in profit the company reported yesterday, which surpassed already lofty expectations, inspired a rush of analyst notes this morning, all of them enthusiastic, all of them containing raised target prices on Apple’s (AAPL) stock (Eric Savitz at Barron’s has the full run down).

Abramsky, for example, raised his target price to $350 from $275, and he wasn’t the only one. Chris Whitmore at Deutsche Bank did the same, saying, “Apple continues to show both impressive growth and profitability and is well positioned to benefit from the confluence of three major product refreshes beginning in the June quarter, namely: iPad, Macs and iPhone refresh expected this summer.”

Over at Broadpoint.AmTech, Brian Marshall raised his target to $320 for similar reasons: “Apple continues to gain share across its major product lines (iPhones, Macs and iPods),” he wrote in a research note. “Its business model is becoming stronger over time as well as the company benefits from an increasing richness of its revenue mix and when ASP cuts come, customers typically migrate up the ‘SKU stack’ and buy higher priced items with higher associated gross margins.”

And at Piper Jaffray, analyst Gene Munster dismissed Apple’s comically conservative guidance, upping his target to $323 from $299. Apple’s June quarter will be an encore to the one it just delivered, he said in a research note.

With a new iPhone waiting in the wings and the much ballyhooed iPad having just arrived at market, it does seem that way, doesn’t it? Consider this from Munster:

“Apple indicated that early iPad sales exceeded company expectations, which we see as a positive indication for the long-term investment prospects of the iPad segment. As the value proposition clarifies, we believe investors will begin to see the iPad as a Mac for the masses. In other words, the iPad is a lower-ASP device that accomplishes many everyday computing tasks as well as a Mac; as such, we believe the addressable market for the iPad is larger than many investors believe.”

If this proves true, expect Apple to deliver another of its “best quarters ever” when it next reports earnings.

At $258.14, Apple shares are trading up 5.54 percent today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asked Mossberg: “All from here?”

“Yeah,” said Jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

Premium Buys Encryption for Evernote

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:06:06 +0000

Your review of the Evernote notes-storage service last week made it sound tempting. But do they encrypt my notes on their servers so a hacker can’t steal them? And what happens to my notes if they go out of business?

A: Evernote isn’t a purely cloud-based (Internet-based) system. It does store your notes on its servers, for Web access, but it also exists as a synchronized local application on Windows, Mac and every major smart phone. So your notes are stored locally on the hard disks of your various computers. Local storage is available on the iPhone app, and the company says it plans to add local storage to Android phones soon. Thus, even if the company went out of business, the notes on your Mac or PC or iPhone would be safe.

Evernote says it doesn’t encrypt data on its servers because it indexes all your notes for quick searching, and performs image recognition on photo notes, and it claims encryption would prevent that. Your user name and password, however, are always encrypted in transit, according to the company, and passwords aren’t stored on its servers—even if you have a free account. For premium users ($5 a month or $45 a year) all of the data, not just user names and passwords, are encrypted.

Also, the service allows users to encrypt all, or any part, of any note, and the company says it doesn’t receive the key to decrypt this material. The only part of a wholly encrypted note that the company would hold on its server would be its title and tags, if any.

I’m looking for a lightweight laptop, ideally under five pounds and with long-lasting battery life. I’m confused by all the models. Can you help me to narrow it down to a handful?

A: Unless you are looking for a tiny netbook, I suggest you consider a couple of options. One is a new category of Windows laptops variously called things like “ultrathin” and “thin and light.” All are well under five pounds in weight and many have good battery life. I reviewed three of these laptops—models from Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Lenovo—back in November, and you can read the column at http://bit.ly/m3JQn.

The second option worth considering is a Mac, which I believe has superior software and security, albeit at a higher price. Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook and 13″ MacBook Pro, while heavier than this new batch of Windows machines, weigh slightly under five pounds and have strong battery life. My review of the latest MacBook, from October, is available at http://bit.ly/7brVJk.

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

Nook E-Reader Has Potential, but Needs Work

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:03:50 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle has been the king of the nascent, much-hyped, category of wireless e-readers since it came out in 2007. Now, numerous companies are determined to challenge the Kindle with dedicated, mass-market gadgets for reading digital books and periodicals. The latest, and potentially most important, of these is a contender called the Nook, produced by the giant bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS), which started shipping it this week.

The two devices look very similar, but have key differences in capabilities, user interface and polish. Overall, after testing the Nook for about a week, I don’t think it’s as good as the Kindle, at least not yet. At launch, the Nook has the feel of a product with great potential that was rushed to market before it was fully ready.

[ See post to watch video ]

Like the latest standard-size Kindle, which came out earlier this year, the Nook is a roughly 8-inch by 5-inch, ivory-colored plastic tablet that costs $259 and connects wirelessly to an online store. The two devices have essentially identical reading screens, 6 inches when measured diagonally, that allow for only monochrome text and gray-scale graphics, not color. Both come with two gigabytes of internal memory, enough to hold about 1,500 digital books.

Nook’s most obvious difference from Kindle is that it also boasts a second, smaller color screen beneath the main reading screen. This touch screen is used for navigating and for typing via an on-screen keyboard when performing searches or adding notes to books. Also, when the touch screen is dark, it can be swiped to turn pages instead of using the physical page-turning buttons at the sides of the main screen.

The competing Kindle (formerly called the Kindle 2, but now back to just Kindle) uses a joystick, Menu and Home buttons, and pop-up menus on the main screen for navigating. It has a physical keyboard below the screen for typing and can turn pages only using physical buttons.

A customer tries a Nook e-reader at a Barnes Noble store in Manhattan on Monday.

Also, unlike the Kindle, the Nook lets you lend certain digital books to others for a limited period, an innovation that removes one of the most common complaints about buying books electronically instead of on paper.

Another big difference: Nook claims a catalog of just over one million digital books, versus 389,000 for the Kindle. But this is somewhat misleading, because over half of the Nook catalog is made up of free out-of-copyright titles published before 1923, the vast majority of which are likely to be of little interest to average readers. Barnes & Noble refuses to say how many modern commercial titles it offers, or even whether it has more or fewer of these than Amazon (AMZN).

Amazon says it already has nearly 20,000 of the most popular such older books available and plans to add hundreds of thousands more in the coming months, to bring its total selection to more than one million.

Amazon also offers well over 100 newspapers and magazines and 7,500 blogs. Barnes & Noble says it will have about 45 periodicals in the coming weeks, but no blogs.

The Nook has a small color screen for navigating and typing notes.

Both devices offer downloads of most best-sellers, but in a random, unscientific test I performed using print books from around my house, I found Amazon’s commercial e-book catalog superior. Barnes & Noble lacked digital versions of two recent historical biographies I own, and had no digital editions of the works of one of my favorite contemporary mystery writers, Donna Leon. Amazon had all these books in Kindle editions. Barnes & Noble says titles like these are being added.

During my tests, I found the Nook slower, more cumbersome to use and less polished than the Kindle. I ran into various crashes and bugs. And, while the Kindle’s navigation system isn’t exactly world class, it ran circles around the Nook’s, despite the great possibilities offered by the latter’s use of the touch screen.

The Nook may be wonderful one day, but, as of today, it’s no match for the Kindle, despite advantages such as lending, because it’s more annoying to use.

For instance, the Nook constantly delayed taking me to books while the main screen displayed a message that said “formatting.” Its standard practice is to open books you select not at the actual start of the book, but at a description of the book. Turning pages inside books was slower than on the Kindle. Looking up a word in the built-in dictionary, a quick process on the Kindle, was far harder on the Nook. Even swiping the touch screen to turn pages would suddenly stop working for periods of time.

The good news for those who have ordered a Nook, which is currently sold out, is that its software can be updated, and Barnes & Noble is promising to fix the problems, starting with a wirelessly delivered patch next week that it says will improve the speed a bit, get you closer to the start of the book, and repair some of the bugs.

Two things are worth noting here. First, I also criticized the design of the original Kindle and the original Sony (SNE) e-reader, both of which have improved in subsequent iterations. (Sony, which was in this market early, is promising to release its first wireless e-reader later this month.)

Second, the entire e-reader market is still in its infancy. The lack of color in books and periodicals alone is a huge drawback. One day, I suspect both of these products will look like a 1996 Palm (PALM) PDA does compared with an Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

The Nook is a bit shorter and narrower than the Kindle, but it is an ounce heavier and significantly thicker. It has a cleaner look, because the bezel around the screen is narrower and there is no physical keyboard. The touch screen adds a dash of color, though it often goes dark to save battery life.

Like the Kindle, the Nook has built-in cellular connectivity with no monthly charges. But it also adds Wi-Fi, which is free at Barnes & Noble stores, though mostly unusable at other commercial hotspots, because the Nook lacks a Web browser that would allow you to log in. The Kindle has a crude Web browser, but no Wi-Fi.

Speaking of battery life, the Nook’s is worse than the Kindle’s. It claims about 10 days of typical use with wireless off, and just two days with wireless on. In my week of tests, with wireless on constantly, I had to charge it three times. Amazon rates the Kindle at 14 days of typical use with wireless off and seven days with wireless on, which squares with my own Kindle experience.

The Nook beats the Kindle in a few areas. Lending is a key one, though only about half of the commercial titles are eligible for lending, you can lend each one only once to a given person, and loans expire after two weeks. In my tests, lending worked OK after a couple of false starts.

Another is that Barnes & Noble takes advantage of its stores. In addition to getting free Wi-Fi, Nook owners who enter a Barnes & Noble store can read books on their Nooks for free, and get help from staff members.

Unlike the Kindle, the Nook also has a slot for expandable memory cards and a replaceable battery. Barnes & Noble also has companion PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry software for reading e-books, even if you don’t own a Nook. Amazon has such software, so far, only for the iPhone and PC.

But, while Amazon will synchronize your last page read if you switch from reading a book on one device to using another, Barnes & Noble lacks that capability yet, though it says it will have it soon.

One more thing: The latest standard-size Kindle allows wireless book purchasing in multiple countries. The Nook does so only in the U.S.

My recommendation on the Nook is to wait, even if you prefer its features to the Kindle’s. It’s not fully baked yet.

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.

Succinctly Speaking With Steve Ballmer: Sidekick Fiasco "Not Good"

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:07:40 +0000

T-Mobile Sidekick users who lost their personal data in a humiliating server failure at Microsoft subsidiary Danger last week are today restoring their contact lists–but not much else. With a tool provided on T-Mobile’s Web site, subscribers can view and restore their contacts as of Oct. 1. This is apparently the first phase of a multistep restoration process that Microsoft promises will eventually include photographs, notes, to-do lists, marketplace data and high scores.

Again, nice to hear this talk of a full data restoration after T-Mobile’s warning that all personal data had been permanently lost. Clearly, Microsoft (MSFT) is doing everything in its power to remedy the issue, which has led many to question the company’s protocols for redundancy and server failure, and beyond these, whether the software giant can even be trusted to safeguard user data. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Network World, the Sidekick fiasco was “not good.”

“It is something we are going to have to address and explain to customers, our method and process and quality approach and what went wrong in that case and how we are making sure that it does not happen again,” Ballmer said. “Non-Sidekick users, we are not earning their trust back but I think people are going to say, ‘Hey, look, show me what you are doing to insure this does not happen to me.’”

Succinctly Speaking With Steve Ballmer: Sidekick Fiasco "Not Good"

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:07:40 +0000

If the Sidekick Fiasco Is a "Premium Mobile Experience," I’d Hate to See the Basic Version

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:17:15 +0000

Good news for SideKick users bemoaning the back-end server failure that wiped out their personal data–and those suing over it: Microsoft says it has recovered most of the data it initially believed to be permanently lost.

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Roz Ho, corporate VP of Microsoft’s ironically named Premium Mobile Experiences division, said in a letter to customers.

“We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

That’s quite a change from what Microsoft (MSFT) said a few days ago when it warned that user data had “almost certainly” been lost and that the likelihood of recovering it was “extremely low.” Still, it’s clearly the best outcome for a bad situation.

If the Sidekick Fiasco Is a "Premium Mobile Experience," I’d Hate to See the Basic Version

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:17:15 +0000

New iPhone Is Better Model–Or Just Get OS 3.0

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:00:38 +0000

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.

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

iPhone 3.0 @ 10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT

John Paczkowski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:05:08 +0000

10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT.

That’s when Apple (AAPL) is expected to roll out iPhone 3.0, an update that will bring a number of long-anticipated features to the iconic device. Among them: voice memos; a landscape keyboard for Mail, Messages, Notes and Safari; a phone-wide Spotlight Search; push notifications; the long-overdue cut, copy and paste; and MMS and Internet tethering–neither of which is currently supported by AT&T (T).

Let’s hear it for carrier exclusivity!

iPhone 3.0 @ 10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT

John Paczkowski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:05:08 +0000

10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT.

Let’s hear it for carrier exclusivity!

Warner Music Doubles Up on Debt: Another EMI Bid Coming?

Peter Kafka — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:31:06 +0000

Turns out not everyone is convinced that big music is dying: Investors have snapped up $1.1 billion in debt issued by Warner Music Group–double the amount the company had originally planned on issuing when it announced the offering yesterday morning.

Details on the new notes, which mature in 2016, are available here, and there’s more fine print here. But the broad strokes are that the offering will allow Warner to bolster its balance sheet, and remove investors’ concerns about its ability to finance existing debt load. Those concerns had prompted Warner to dump its dividend a year ago–long before dividend-slashing became trendy.

But the most interesting part of the offering, per Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield, is language allowing Warner to redeem the notes early “if a major music transaction occurs.” Translation: Warner still isn’t giving up on the idea of combining with EMI Music Group, a merger the two labels have been trying to pull off for nearly a decade.

Hey! Also, there’s a new album out from Green Day, one of Warner’s biggest acts. I’d show you a YouTube clip, but Warner (WMG) and Google’s (GOOG) video site are still sparring, so the label’s videos aren’t on the world’s largest video site. So here’s Green Day 1.0 (per “High Fidelity”): Stiff Little Fingers, circa 1980:

Microsoft: Mr. Acquisitive?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:58:48 +0000

With $25 billion in its coffers, Microsoft isn’t exactly hurting for cash. So why is the company planning a bond offering that could raise billions in additional capital? Microsoft (MSFT) won’t say, exactly. “The company is not in need of financing,” a spokesperson explained in a statement. “It is taking advantage of good market conditions and Microsoft’s great credit rating,” adding that proceeds from the sale of the notes will be used for “general corporate purposes.” Those include working capital and share buybacks. They also include acquisitions, which, as investor Eric Jackson notes, the company could use more of.

And this is certainly a good time to buy. “To be successful in the long run, Microsoft needs people to green-light the best acquisitions and teams of people with the right skill sets to integrate them,” Jackson writes. “Frankly, Microsoft hasn’t shown it has either of those abilities. Microsoft investors don’t need another expensive aQuantive deal or Facebook investment that smacks of desperation and has questionable long-term value for the company’s shareholders. It needs to take a page out of IBM’s and Oracle’s playbook, though, and start doing deals to grow its top and bottom lines. A big debt issuance, with a skilled acquisition team, and evidence of some exciting growth-related deals could suddenly show the market that this elephant can dance again.”