This closely follows moves by other major retail chains, such as Lowe’s, Home Depot, Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters, in embracing what could be called iCommerce.

As in the other cases, the devices are not intended to replace the cash register, but rather to assist customers. Associates will be able to tap the screen to check available inventory, order products online and access product information and videos, right where the customer is standing.

I’ve written previously about how retailers of all different sizes are now using iPads, but it’s amazing how much tablets are redefining both digital e-commerce and physical shopping experiences.

The retailers include large chains — Lowe’s plans to roll out 42,000 handheld devices in the U.S. and Canada — and midsize companies, such as Pacific Sunwear, which expects to buy up to 900 devices this year for its apparel stores.

Even smaller retailers, such as wineries and coffee shops, are using iPads, often as a replacement for registers, which can not only cost a lot but can also be very bulky. Companies such as Square, Verifone and Intuit have built applications and accompanying swipe dongles to assist with credit card payments.

Sears also believes there’s a practical purpose to rolling out the devices. It said that employees will be able to use them to manage tasks and increase productivity, including assisting customers faster than before.

As part of the tech push, Sears will also be offering free Wi-Fi to customers so they can use their own smartphones or tablets to surf the Web, shop online or compare prices before they purchase.

The shift has led to a thriving market at 30,000 feet to provide Wi-Fi, movies and TV shows on travelers’ smartphones, tablets and laptops.

About 1,260 aircraft, or more than a third of all mainline passenger airplanes in the U.S., now offer passengers Internet access to surf the Web and check email. The connection can be accessed at 10,000 feet, the federal minimum altitude to use portable electronics.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

How do I permanently delete a Facebook account?

A:

Facebook doesn’t make it quick or easy. The default choice is to “deactivate” your account, which allows you to change your mind and reactivate, and thus spare the company the loss of a member. Deactivated accounts can’t be seen by others, but all their data remain on Facebook’s servers. You can totally and permanently delete an account, but this isn’t a simple process. You have to submit a request, at http://on.fb.me/n5OemK, or go to the Facebook help center and search for “delete account.” Then you have to wait awhile, while Facebook hopes you change your mind. More information on both options is at: http://on.fb.me/pxjtS2.

Q:

I am generally very pleased with the MacBook Air that I recently purchased. However, when I am on the road, I find that my Air loses connectivity to the wireless network that I am using. Any thoughts or suggestions? This is frustrating.

A:

I have noticed something similar lately, on my own MacBook Air that’s been upgraded to the new Lion operating system. It doesn’t randomly drop Wi-Fi connections, but it does take too long to reestablish them when waking from sleep. In my case, this is a new and recent behavior. I asked Apple about your question and my experience, and the company conceded that it has received reports of problems with Lion-equipped Macs “sporadically” dropping Wi-Fi connections and is developing what it hopes is a fix. That fix, it says, will be part of a software update to be made available soon.

A fix is coming for MacBook Air machines with Wi-Fi problems.

Q:

I want a tablet for occasional road trips. If I get a Wi-Fi-only model do I need to worry about my passwords being stolen if I use an open network? Is it better, if cumbersome, to use my Droid X smartphone to set up a password-protected Wi-Fi hot spot and connect through it?

A:

I have long advised avoiding shared, open, public Wi-Fi networks when dealing with sensitive data. I am not a security expert, and I am sure there are ways for determined hackers to penetrate your Droid, or any smartphone. But I agree that your odds are much better with a password-protected network that you control, that only you use, and that relies on a cellular network proprietary to a wireless carrier. Just remember that your security is never guaranteed on the Internet, especially in public places.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

Arriving at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, in the heart of the tech industry, with the leader of the free world talking jobs and digital, you might expect fantastic wireless access.

You might, but not so much if you are a “local” reporter and can’t jack into the extra-secret-special wireless link the national White House press corps apparently has reserved for itself. (They also get a lovely noshing buffet, whilst we tech reporters have been instructed not to touch the pineapple and scones or else!)

Famished for coffee and carbs, we’re left with glomming onto the museum’s slowish wireless service — there are lotsa geeks here today jamming up the lines — and every now and then getting some juice from Google. The search giant blankets the Mountain View, Calif. area near its HQ with free Wi-Fi, but it fades in and out.

I am now reconsidering the antitrust investigations that the Obama administration is conducting against Google, as long as its signal is good enough to check Twitter.

So this liveblog of President Barack Obama’s LinkedIn Town Hall — which will center on jobs and is titled, “Putting America Back to Work” — could be glacial with not much news, much like what I am expecting from the event itself.

I’d certainly like to work, as long as the wireless does! (Plus, limited power outlets in the room, so it’s every reporter for herself!)

But bygones, while we await the Prez!

10:18 am: One thing that made me flee Washington, D.C., when I worked for the Washington Post, was all the rigmarole that surrounded the appearance of and access to politicians.

I get it, the security and all, and am all for it on a general safety level. But, no matter how you slice it, it hinders any kind of movement or genuine interaction, like being stuck at a really dull opera. All the world’s a stage and we are all merely waiting in traffic.

In contrast, and one of the joys of Silicon Valley, is that anyone can get up right up into the grill of the various billionaire potentates littering the landscape, engage in a debate and get a possibly real answer.

Thus, I am hoping for a lot here from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who is going to moderate the hour-long session with the President.

By the way, while he is busy running the business-focused social networking site, Weiner is looking good in a fancy suit, almost as if he could be Secretary of the Internet. I’d vote for him.

10:28 am: Some painless but hip music is playing now, as we wait, wait, wait for Obama, who is set to begin in 30 minutes.

I wonder if the President is ever early. Wouldn’t that freak the peeps out?

(Obviously, I am bored, so I shall now go monitor Twitter to catch up on the latest in the new bad-marriage-or-not cat fight between Brad Pitt and his ex, Jennifer Aniston — as if we need him to tell us Angelina Jolie is more interesting. Frankly, Angie’s midday snack is more interesting than Jen.)

There is now what appears to be a Secret Service dude next to me, giving me a hairy eyeball. If I am jailed over my wireless protest, please give generously to my defense fund.

Free the Internet! Free the Internet!

10:35 am: Finally, the production guy is up giving out the rules. Turn off the cellphones, no making noise.

The head Secret Service guy then takes the stage. No getting out of your seat. No sudden movements. And no crossing the blue line in the front row.

“All joking aside,” he says, he will take you down. He also notes that if the President moves toward you to shake your hand, “do not move toward him.”

I love Secret Service agents — especially when played by Clint Eastwood — and wish I had one to give a few people in tech a little smackadoo on my behalf. And not only if they moved toward me!

10:47 am: This little frisson of excitement is followed by more waiting, as the final seats are filled up in the room, which is an unusually (and welcome) multi-racial and gender-balanced crowd for Silicon Valley.

Various White House aides skitter back and forth like nervous ground squirrels — I would imagine their life is one big effort to avoid any gaffe — so the Prez must be near.

I am actually looking forward to seeing him, as I never have in person and am looking forward to seeing the famous Obama charm and techie cred.

Indeed, he is probably the most fast-forward tech president there has ever been. That said, buffeted by more serious issues facing the nation, his administration has delivered on few — by which I mean none — of its promises around the digitization of the U.S.

Our high-speed broadband, for example, is still woefully slow, inordinately expensive and not easily available nationwide.

And I will not even go into the need for increased focus on math and science education or the importance of our broken visa policies.

But the topic today is jobs, which is an arena where Silicon Valley and tech shines in the U.S., even as manufacturing of it has mostly moved overseas. How tech can help improve in the creation of jobs will be issue No. 1 here.

10:55 am: Total silence with five minutes to go. I need the President around to quiet my kids.

Now, LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman comes in, so the event is probably about to begin.

And, indeed, Weiner emerges to cheers, to give a little speech on “changing the way we work … and connecting talent to opportunity.”

11:01 am: Then, the session starts right on time with President Obama.

He begins with a rote speech on jobs, which is nonetheless the most important issue he faces going into next year’s election.

11:14 am: Ah, wireless glitch! Back!

President Obama is inexplicably in the middle of a Medicare question, which gives him an opportunity to talk about the need for the rich to pay more taxes.

And pass his American Jobs Act, of course.

11:17 am: More on proposing legislation for retraining workers, such as the questioner’s mom.

Now to a group of email questions. The first is about when small businesses are going to get a break from onerous regulations and taxes.

President Obama says since he has been in office, he has cut taxes 16 times for those who create a business.

But he is not going to apologize for some regulations, such as those for the financial industry over the mortgage crisis.

“There are some regulations that have outlived their usefulness,” he says, but others not so much.

11:24 am: The next question is from a Chicago IT employee. Except she is not employed.

She is asking a question about keeping her skills up and what programs are needed.

“The best thing we can do for you is that the unemployment rate goes down,” said President Obama, but also adds that making it easy to go to school while waiting on a job is also important.

“Just looking at you, I can tell you are going to do great,” he tells her in an awkward effort at reassurance.

Thanks, Barack, but she needs a job!

11:28 am: A veteran is asking a question about transitioning out of the military.

Obama launches into a story of a medical technician who faced all kinds of experiences, but had to start over again with new classes when out of the military. He suggests some level of credentialing based on experience.

11:33 am: Obama gets to pick out someone from the crowd and manages to pick out a dude who is a former Googler — although he only says that he works down the street — and is out of work by choice.

He asks: “Will you please raise my taxes?

A plant? I wish!

President Obama asks the name of the start-up. “A search engine,” says the ex-Googler-in-disguise, who is Doug Edwards, an early marketing exec there who actually wrote a book on being an ex-Googler.

“That worked out well for you,” kids President Obama.

Everyone likes a rich-guy joke!

He is soon onto the idea that we’re all dang lucky and declares he does not want it to turn the debate over taxes into a rich-poor war.

Bottom line, he notes that we have to raise taxes on the very wealthy. Frankly, if we raised taxes on a bunch of folks in this room, it would help a lot.

11:42 am: A teach-training question, especially math and science teachers.

President Obama is all for it.

He is meaning well here, but all he seems to offer is a lot of bromides about the importance of education and errant related anecdotes.

Like one from IBM, where the company hires the kids in the program at the end.

President Obama wants students to see a direct connection between learning and jobs.

Then, he kind of says it again. Gosh, he can talk. How does the well-fed and wirelessly connected White House press corp take it? Lotsa donuts, I would imagine.

President Obama also wants us to turn off the electronics and video games for kids, too, thereby instantly losing the votes of my two sons!

Another laid-off guy is up at the mic. He had 22 years in IT management and is disheartened.

He wants a statement of encouragement from the CEO of America.

President Obama assures him that his track record of success gives him a leg up, but that the problem is the economy and the global meltdown, too.

It’s systemic, apparently.

“The problem is not you, the problem is the economy as a whole,” says President Obama.

That was the last question. Weiner, who has been sitting quietly (I know it was hard, Jeff, but good job), thanks the President and tells him that this is a big issue.

President does his thanks, too, for being able to speak, although not really that much was actually said.

And then a genuine moment, finally, of clarity.

“Look, we’re going through a very tough time, but we have gone through tougher times before,” he says. “But the trajectory we are going on is one that is more open, more linked …”

He talks about the need for being ready to take advantage of that opportunity.

“Things have gotten so ideologically driven, putting party above country,” he adds, that nothing is getting done. That’s why the people, the voters, have to demand leadership from their elected officials.

Or, presumably, fire them and let them try to find another job, too.

It might turn out to be the best idea yet, if these pols don’t agree on something and quick.

These days, though, smartphones and tablets make up more than half of such connections, according to new data released on Tuesday by Boingo Wireless. February was the first month that mobile devices outnumbered laptops; by May, such devices amounted to 59 percent of Wi-Fi connections.

A year ago, laptops represented two-thirds of Boingo’s connections, and two years ago, just a quarter of machines accessing the airport Wi-Fi networks were mobile devices.

“Since the launch of the iPhone in June 2007, we’ve seen a marked growth trend for non-laptop devices, but the exponential growth in iPhones and iPads in the last year pushed mobile devices past laptops, showcasing just how disruptive the trend is,” Boingo VP Dawn Callahan said in a statement.

Boingo notes that laptops aren’t going away — mobile devices are just proliferating much faster. There are twice as many laptops, for example, than there were in 2007. However the smartphone has taken off, fueled by the launch of the iPhone in June of 2007.

Apple’s iOS continues to dominate the mobile space, accounting for 83 percent of the mobile total. Combined, all Android devices are still a distant fourth place behind the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch when it comes to popularity on Boingo’s network.

The findings mirror a rise in mobile devices using inflight Wi-Fi, such as that offered by Gogo. In the air, iPads account for more than a third of big-screen connections, compared to about 20 percent for Macs and 41 percent for Windows PCs. Android devices trail Apple’s mobile products on Gogo’s networks as well.

Mobile devices are also gobbling up a lot more data than they did just two years earlier, Boingo said. On a monthly basis, the average mobile device consumed 211 megabytes of data in June, compared with 114 megabytes in May 2009. And the devices are also consuming that data in less time, gulping an average of 8.9 megabytes in every 10 minutes of use, compared with 3.7 megabytes in the same period two years earlier.

SanDisk will sell co-branded four gigabyte and 8GB memory cards that are similar in features to the company’s current entry-level products.

Though the partnership is initially centered around SanDisk selling co-branded Eye-Fi chips in Europe, CEO Yuval Koren notes that it opens the door for the two companies to work together more closely down the road.

“We really see this as the beginning of a deeper partnership,” Koren said in an interview, noting the deal has been some time in the making.

Although Eye-Fi had been distributing its memory cards in a few European countries, such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, its efforts had been limited in scale.

“They are obviously going to take a much broader approach to that,” Koren said. With the deal, Eye-Fi plans to transition from selling its own brand cards in Europe.

It’s for reasons like this — and in no small part thanks to the fact that the U.S. has been engaged in two or three wars — that the Iridium satellite phone system that once seemed to perfectly symbolize the overreaching ambitions of the late 1990s telecom boom exists. Following the 1999 bankruptcy of the original Motorola-backed venture, it has undergone a fascinating reorganization and rebirth over the last decade. Iridium has not only survived but thrived as a data and voice platform that companies in specialized segments turn to when they want to build products and services designed to make voice and data connections possible in places where no other means are available. I talked with CEO Matthew Desch about all this in June.

So today, Iridium made a handful of announcements that give some interesting indications of future directions. One is a Wi-Fi-enabled device called the AxcessPoint. Think of it as a satellite-enabled Mi-Fi that will get an iPhone or notebook PC or Wi-Fi-ready BlackBerry connected to the Iridium data network from whatever ridiculously remote spot in the world you find yourself.

The AxcessPoint requires a physical connection to an Iridium phone, and it just so happens that the company launched one of those today, too, called the Iridium Extreme. You might think this would have been an obvious need before, but this phone has been ruggedized so it can survive the rough and tumble that its users might put it through. The company says it’s built to Military Standard 810F, which is a fancy way of saying something like it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

There’s not much need for making, say, a satellite-ready standalone smartphone, Desch told me when we talked last week. (That’s him holding the new phone and Wi-Fi gadget in the picture.) There is value in making your existing phones work in some way with the Iridium network. “We think it should be easy for other personal devices to have a satellite connection,” he said.

The connections aren’t exactly speedy. But they’re good enough to handle email and basic Web-browsing. Don’t bother trying to stream “Glee” via Hulu over an Iridium connection, though if you’re using it, you probably have other things on your mind.

Probably more important than the access point or the phone is what Iridium calls the brains of the hardware. If you have your own idea for a product that would connect to the Iridium system, you can license the technology and build it around its Core device, which is a credit-card-size voice and data module that some 200 or more Iridium partners use to build devices to track things and monitor equipment in remote places.

Those partners are making Iridium’s data business bigger. While voice is still its main business, accounting for about 60 percent of sales as of Iridium’s most recent quarter, data services, also known as machine-to-machine or M2M, are growing at a nice clip. The number of M2M subscribers surged year over year to 146,000 from 89,000 at an average revenue per user of about $22.

On the news, Iridium shares — the company went public in 2009 after being acquired by an investment company — rose by 25 cents, or more than 3 percent, to $7.50 a share, though they’re still down from where they were at the start of the year.

You’re on the most hostile network in the world. If you can perform business here, you can do it anywhere.

DEF CON attendee Brian Markus on the hacking conference’s public Wi-Fi network.

The company announced Vonage Extensions, which allows people to make Vonage calls over their mobile phones, including international calls. The service is free, but only works if you are using Vonage for home phone calls.

“Now new and existing customers can call these unlimited countries on their mobile phones for no additional cost,” Vonage CEO Marc Lefar said in a statement. “This new service dramatically increases the value of Vonage’s core offering, providing customers with more flexibility and savings when making international calls.”

Customers can add any phone number as an “extension” to their Vonage account, and dial an access number and the number they wish to call, much like a calling card. The service works with any mobile phone, but the company also plans to introduce iPhone and Android apps over the coming weeks, which will simplify the process so users can simply dial a number from their contact list without having to enter so many numbers.

With the move, Vonage will also find itself up against a range of competitors, including familiar foes like Skype as well as new mobile-focused competitors such as Viber.

It’s not the first foray into mobile for Vonage. The company released an iPhone app back in 2009, though it only allowed calls over Wi-Fi.

You can get apps that allow tablets to access files you’ve stored in the cloud on services like Dropbox or SugarSync, but these require an Internet connection and can be slow.

Now, two companies are coming out with small, portable, companion hard disks that massively increase the storage capacity of tablets. And because most tablets lack USB connectors, these external hard disks stream their content to the tablets over a special, local Wi-Fi network they create. No Internet access is required. The content remains on the external device, though you can download files to the tablet’s own memory for permanent storage there.

I’ve been testing the first of these gadgets to emerge. It’s from Seagate Technology, the big hard-disk company, and is called the GoFlex Satellite. It costs $200, and holds 500 gigabytes of data, far more than the 64 gigabytes that is the maximum on typical current tablets.

It was initially designed for use with Apple’s iPad, though it also works on Android tablets, as well as on iPhones and Android smartphones. It works best with a special iPad or iPhone app you install, though it will operate through the Web browser on Apple and Android devices.

In my tests, the Satellite basically did its job, smoothly and rapidly streaming movies, songs, pictures and documents to an iPad and other devices. It is battery-powered, so you can carry it around with your iPad, or leave it plugged in for longer use, as long as the iPad remains within about 150 feet. It isn’t tiny—about 5 by 3.5 by 1.25 inches, and just over half a pound—but it’s quite portable. It can stream different content to up to three devices simultaneously.

The portable GoFlex Satellite can stream different content to up to three devices.

However, the Satellite has some drawbacks and trade-offs. The main trade-off is that, while you are connected to it via Wi-Fi for streaming, your iPad or other device can’t access the Internet, so you’re cut off from things like email, Web browsing and social networks. If you launch the Web browser while connected wirelessly to the Satellite, it just brings up the Satellite’s menu of files, regardless of what website you type in.

In addition, both the companion app and the Web-browser-interface display, while attractive and simple, can be clumsy to use. It is awkward to play photo slideshows or to listen to multiple songs in a row. And the Wi-Fi connection dropped several times, even when the iPad and the Satellite were located very near each other.

The GoFlex Satellite

For me, the battery life fell short of the company’s five-hour claim.

The Satellite’s main competitor, due out later this month, is called the G-Connect, from Hitachi. Like the Seagate offering, it costs $200, holds 500 gigabytes of content, and is initially designed for the iPad and iPhone. Unlike the Satellite, it has no internal battery, though it will accept external batteries made for the iPad.

Also, unlike the Satellite, it allows simultaneous media streaming to an iPad and Internet connectivity, though only when the G-Connect is hooked up to a wired Internet connection via its Ethernet jack. I wasn’t able to test the G-Connect, so I can’t say how well it will work.

A third contender in this category, the Wi-Drive from Kingston Technology, is a bit different. While it has an internal battery and uses Wi-Fi to stream content, it has no hard disk and uses only memory chips. Thus, it has much less capacity than the other two, and doesn’t add much storage to a tablet—only up to 32 gigabytes extra. It isn’t yet available, according to the company’s website, which also lists no prices, and I didn’t test it.

So, how do you get content into the Satellite so you can use it on your iPad or other tablet?

First you plug it into a USB port on your PC or Mac. Then, you have two choices. You can either drag whatever files you want manually to the drive. Or, you can use free software that syncs music, video and photos. This software can be set to fetch only content that is playable on your particular device.

Using both methods, I moved 55 videos (including two feature films), more than 2,000 photos, about 1,700 songs and nearly 200 Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents to the Satellite, some from a Mac and some from a Windows machine. Using the sync software, the process was surprisingly fast, and this content took up less than 20% of the drive’s capacity.

All the content showed up as promised on my iPad in both the special app and in the Web browser. I also tested it on an iPhone, where both the app and browser display also gave me access to the content via wireless streaming.

I tried it on two different Android tablets, where the content showed up and played fine via the browser. In addition, I tested a pre-release version of the Android app—almost identical to the iPad app—and it, too, worked as promised.

However, while the Satellite’s app and browser display are clean and well-organized, I found them annoying in some respects.

For one thing, they lack simple slideshow, playlist and album features. While playing a group of multiple photos or songs, I couldn’t manually skip or go back.

In addition, the computer-sync software doesn’t allow you to easily select only certain files or to eliminate small files like record album covers or icons, or special, hidden files your computer creates that look like videos, but aren’t. So your file list gets cluttered with dozens of unplayable or unwanted items.

The Satellite’s battery supposedly lasts five hours when continuously streaming videos to one device. But in my tests, I only got about four hours.

Overall, the GoFlex Satellite might be a useful device for iPad or other tablet owners with large media collections. But it needs work.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110706/the-satellite-extra-storage-for-tablets-on-the-go/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110629/touchpad-needs-more-apps-reboot-to-rival-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20110629/touchpad-needs-more-apps-reboot-to-rival-ipad/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:31:04 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=92988 A small army of multitouch tablet computers has been launched this year to take on Apple’s iPad, which has managed to sell 25 million units and attract 90,000 tablet-specific apps in just about 15 months, and is already in its second generation, the iPad 2. So far, none of these contenders has gained any significant traction with consumers or app developers.

Now, the world’s largest PC maker, Hewlett-Packard, is entering the fray. On Friday, it will start selling the TouchPad, a 10-inch tablet with a slick, distinctive software interface. The TouchPad starts at $500, the same entry price as the iPad 2.

I’ve been testing the TouchPad for about a week and, in my view, despite its attractive and different user interface, this first version is simply no match for the iPad. It suffers from poor battery life, a paucity of apps and other deficits.

The TouchPad comes in two versions, with 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage and, at launch, offers only Wi-Fi connectivity, though a model with a cellular data option is planned.

Clever Interface

I like the interface a lot. Instead of a screen full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad’s operating system, called webOS, presents running apps as “cards”—large, live rectangles that you scroll through in a horizontal row.

When you tap a card, it fills the screen and is ready to use. To minimize it, you just swipe up on the bezel surrounding the screen. A second swipe takes you to a screen from which you can launch or download a new app. To get rid of a card, you just flick it upward, and it disappears. Multiple cards can run in the background.

And these cards are clever. For instance, the contacts and photo cards combine both local and online content, from sources like Google and Facebook; and cards with related functions, like an email message and an attachment you’ve opened, are stacked atop one another.

You can make Skype video and audio calls directly from the messaging apps. And if you buy a forthcoming H-P webOS smartphone, you can link it to the tablet wirelessly, and send and receive voice calls and text messages from the tablet, or transfer a Web page from the phone by tapping the phone on the tablet.

The TouchPad presents running apps as ‘cards’—when you tap one, it fills the screen and is ready to use.

Hardware and Battery

But the tablet’s hardware is bulbous and heavy compared with the iPad 2 or the svelte Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, an Android tablet. Worse, it’s missing some key features common on the other tablets, like a rear camera or even a camera app for taking videos and still pictures. It has a front camera that can be used only for video chats.

I found the TouchPad’s battery life was only 60% of that of the iPad 2. In my standard tablet battery test, where I set the screen brightness to 75%, keep the Wi-Fi connection active and play local videos back to back, the TouchPad lasted just 6 hours and 5 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. H-P claims 9 hours of continuous video playback, but that’s with Wi-Fi turned off. In mixed use, battery life was decent.

Apps

When H-P bought webOS a year ago this week as part of its purchase of the system’s inventor, Palm, one hope was that the giant company’s clout would attract lots of apps to the platform. But the TouchPad will launch with just 300 tablet-optimized apps and only 6,200 webOS apps overall, most written for phones and only 70% of which can run on the tablet, in a small, phone-size window that can’t be expanded. That compares with 425,000 total apps for the iPad and 200,000 for Android tablets, nearly all of which can run on tablets even if they aren’t optimized for the tablet.

This first TouchPad has no app, such as Netflix, for streaming TV shows or movies (though its Web browser, unlike the iPad’s, can run Adobe Flash and can stream videos via the Web). Its version of the QuickOffice productivity suite, unlike the same product on the iPad, can’t edit documents, but merely displays them. My test unit lacked stores for directly downloading TV shows, movies and music. H-P says a music store will be available at launch and a video download store “shortly” after launch.

Glitches

I also ran into plenty of bugs in my tests, even though H-P said I was testing a production unit. For instance, on various occasions, the email app failed to display the contents of messages, the photos app failed to display pictures, and the game “Angry Birds” crashed repeatedly. All of these problems required a reboot of the device to resolve.

In addition, I found the TouchPad grew sluggish the more I used it. Again, a reboot was needed to restore normal speed. H-P acknowledges most of these problems and says it is already working on a webOS update, to be delivered wirelessly in three to six weeks that will fix nearly all of them.

Browsing and Skype

The Web browser generally worked well, but Flash was uneven. Most Flash videos played fine, but some froze or stuttered badly, even on a fast Internet connection. A site written entirely in Flash wouldn’t even load. After a few false starts in my tests, Skype video worked well. I even conducted a smooth 50-minute TouchPad-to-TouchPad video call with a senior H-P executive.

Typing

Typing on the TouchPad’s virtual keyboard—the first in a webOS device—was a mixed bag.

The keyboard has five rows instead of the four on the iPad, which spares you from the iPad’s tedious switching of keyboard layouts to, say, type numbers or exclamation points. And you can shrink or enlarge the keyboard, a nice touch.

However, the TouchPad’s auto-correct didn’t insert the apostrophe in some common words, such as “don’t” and “won’t,” slowing me down, and it lacks the common feature that inserts a period when you hit the space bar twice, a feature I missed constantly.

Also, I found it much harder to correct words, because there is no magnifying glass or similar effect to help you precisely place the cursor. H-P does sell a physical wireless keyboard for $70.

Pluses

Despite these problems, in many ways the TouchPad is a joy to use. Its new version of the operating system, webOS 3, was rebuilt with tablets in mind.

As on competing tablets, key apps have been rewritten to take advantage of the larger screen.

For instance, the email app, which can combine numerous accounts, has three sliding panels—one listing accounts and mailboxes, another listing message headers and short previews and the last containing an email’s contents.

Wireless printing is built-in and worked well in my tests. The universal search function, called Just Type, works with just about every feature and app on the TouchPad. You can even type in a status message and send it to Facebook.

Notifications and common settings like Wi-Fi connections are handled discreetly and easily accessed via drop-down icons at the top of the screen.

Bottom line

H-P stresses that webOS is a platform and that the TouchPad is just one iteration of it. The company plans to add the operating system to numerous devices, including laptops, and hopes that this scale will attract many more apps. And it pledges continuous updates to fix the current shortcomings.

But, at least for now, I can’t recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110629/touchpad-needs-more-apps-reboot-to-rival-ipad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110628/judging-e-readers-by-their-book-readability/ http://allthingsd.com/20110628/judging-e-readers-by-their-book-readability/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:39:01 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=92382 If you’re heading to the beach this summer and you plan to read an e-book, you won’t want to take your iPad. The screen of Apple’s otherwise enjoyable tablet has a glare that’s accentuated in bright sun, even if you’re under an umbrella and wearing a hat and sunglasses, as I learned last summer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Barnes & Noble Nook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fine Print on E-Readers

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

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

* Library lending expected later this year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110628/judging-e-readers-by-their-book-readability/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110525/acer-iconia-tab-a500-tablet-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110525/acer-iconia-tab-a500-tablet-review/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 23:13:31 +0000 Spencer E. Ante http://allthingsd.com/?p=78423 The tablet-computer race is heating up. The latest entrant, Acer Inc.’s Iconia Tab A500, is the first to offer compelling competition to Apple’s dominant iPad in one crucial area: price.

The Iconia Tab has been keenly anticipated, if only because Acer, a Taiwanese company that made its mark by offering sharp but inexpensive laptops and netbooks, is the world’s second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard Co. The Iconia Tab is Acer’s first to run Google’s Android operating system, and joins an increasingly crowded tablet field that features the PlayBook by Research in Motion Ltd., Motorola Inc.’s Xoom, LG Electronics Inc.’s G-Slate and Apple’s own iPad2, which went on sale in March.

A WiFi-only version of the Iconia Tab went on sale on April 24 for $449.99. A new model that works on AT&T Inc.’s 4G wireless network is slated for release this summer for an as-yet-undisclosed price.

I have been putting the Iconia Tab through its paces, and, in my view, it offers the best value of any Android tablet on the market. While it doesn’t beat either iPad overall, the Iconia Tab offers a decent alternative to Apple, especially for multimedia enthusiasts who want to display their content on a TV, PC or smartphone without additional gear.

Trying to best Apple hasn’t been just a matter of hardware and software design— it has also been a pricing challenge. The first-generation iPad launched at $499, and Apple has knocked it down to $399. So far, the new Android-based tablets have induced sticker shock.

The base price of a Wi-Fi-only Xoom is $599 and the G-Slate will run you $750 without a phone contract. The PlayBook retails for $499, but requires a user to link up a BlackBerry phone to run basic apps such as email.

The Iconia Tab is a relatively light, metallic device with a 1 gigahertz, Nvidia dual-core processor, 16 gigabytes of storage, front- and rear-facing cameras, superb sound from Dolby and a high-resolution, 10.1-inch, multitouch screen. It runs the new version of Android, Honeycomb 3.0, a more reliable and elegant operating system than the Android system used on last year’s tablets.

The 1.33-pound iPad 2 is lighter than the Iconia Tab, which tips the scales at 1.69 pounds, but the Acer’s promised battery life of eight hours of gaming and video use and 10 hours of Web browsing matches Apple’s claimed 10 hours.

The Acer tablet also offers a few key features not available on the iPad.

Chief among them is the ability to transfer home movies, family vacation pictures or other content off of the tablet to your TV or PC through an HDMI port, microSD card, or USB port. Apple sells a digital audio/visual adapter that does the same thing for HDMI compatible displays, but it costs $39.

Another nice feature allows a user to create up to five different home screens with an assortment of icons and apps that you choose. Finally, the Iconia supports the Adobe Flash technology, the computer code that supports videos on many websites. It’s a capability notably excluded by Apple.

But the Iconia and its Android brethren prove again that when it comes to a tablet’s software—long an Achilles’ heel of the tablet market that kept it from fulfilling its promise—they are still playing catch-up to the Apple whizzes.

Honeycomb is a far more stable operating system than its previous version, Android 2.2—dubbed Froyo—which frequently crashed and was far from intuitive to use. Still, apps on the new, Honeycomb version crashed infrequently when used over a few days. And it still pales in comparison to Apple’s operating system, which is much easier to learn and use.

For example, while the iPad offers access on its home screen to basic apps such as a Web browser, still and video cameras, and email, the Iconia forces users to click on an “Apps” icon in the top, right-hand corner of the screen to find those apps.

Even at this point, you can’t just move the apps to your home screen. To do so requires a user to click on an even less obvious plus sign in the same top right corner, which then offers access to an “App shortcuts” screen. This allows a user to drag and drop icons to the home screen.

Another major downside of the Iconia and other Android tablets is that the operating system isn’t currently supported by several top Web video providers such as Netflix or Hulu.com. That underscores the No. 1 drawback of the Android tablets—a lack of third-party applications optimized for the tablet’s screen. While iPads can run just over 95,000 apps designed for a tablet, Android claims fewer than 100.

Google says many existing Android apps, though built for phones, will work nicely on tablets. That was true for Angry Birds, which worked great.

That monumental app gap will shrink, as it did on the smartphone, but until it does, the Iconia and other Android tablets will be challenged to compete with the iPad.

For now, the Iconia is the best choice for consumers looking for an alternative to the iPad, and for those willing to be patient as software designers get to work and roll out more goodies for Android tablets throughout the year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110525/acer-iconia-tab-a500-tablet-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110525/broadcom-diagrams-the-smartphone-of-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20110525/broadcom-diagrams-the-smartphone-of-tomorrow/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 21:16:57 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=78290 Though relatively rare on today’s smartphones, new capabilities to more easily connect to nearby devices are on the verge of becoming ubiquitous, according to Broadcom, a major supplier of wireless chips.

Among the technologies that are quickly moving to the mainstream are a new, lower power form of Bluetooth along with Wi-Fi Direct, which lets two devices talk to each other over Wi-Fi without the need to first connect through a router. Also moving from the fringes to the mainstream of the smartphone market is support for so-called Near Field Communications, technology that is most noted for allowing mobile payment, but can also provide a quick means of authentication and sharing of other types of data.

“We’re seeing a huge interest for NFC,” Broadcom Senior Vice President Michael Hurlston said on Wednesday, speaking to a group of reporters in San Francisco.

Broadcom, as CEO Scott McGregor told AllThingsD back in February, is also hard at work on chips to power both low-cost Android phones as well as on technology to improve location-based services indoors, where satellite-based approaches work less well.

The sub-$100 phone market is being further fueled by new players like China’s Huawei and ZTE that are building less expensive phones that can be sold under the carrier’s brands. “Android has certainly been something that has leveled the playing field,” Hurlston said. That trend has helped Broadcom grow its business in China, where it had been less of a strong player.

Hurlston noted that more of its business is still at the high-end of the smartphone market, an area where brands like HTC, Motorola and Apple are seeing strong growth. “The high end of the market is still growing like crazy…but that low end seems to be eating a lot into the feature phone and basic voice [phone market] and that’s very good for us as a business.”

Although battery life is a concern for Broadcom, Hurlston said that one of the challenges is that it is not as high on the request list from the wireless carriers, who have a huge role in dictating what goes into the phones, since–especially in the U.S.–they are the ones buying the phones from device makers.

“What they are most interested in are these new features,” Hurlston said.

Wi-Fi Direct, Hurlston said, should become much more common by the end of the year. “We definitely expect to see a large percentage of phones by year end become Wi-Fi Direct enabled.”

NFC and indoor location services should start to take off toward the end of this year and into the first half of next year, he said.

Another thing that is surprisingly low on the feature request list from carriers, Broadcom executives said, is demand for better voice quality, even though new 4G networks could support using some of that extra bandwidth for improved calling. “What we are not seeing is a lot of pull,” Hurlston said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110525/broadcom-diagrams-the-smartphone-of-tomorrow/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110517/most-android-phones-open-to-snooping-report-says/ http://allthingsd.com/20110517/most-android-phones-open-to-snooping-report-says/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 21:20:08 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7814 Researchers have pointed out that a flaw in all but the most recent versions of Android leaves the vast majority of Android phones vulnerable to a snooping attack.

A report last week from researchers at Germany’s Ulm University found that Google authentication tokens are susceptible to interception in all but the Gingerbread and Honeycomb releases of Android. As a result, an attacker could easily gain access to a user’s private Google account information, such as calendar and contact information, if that phone is used on an open Wi-Fi network.

The issue here–and it is not unique to Google–is that when unencrypted information is sent over open networks, it is easily intercepted, says Lookout Mobile Security CTO Kevin Mahaffey.

“If you are mailing sensitive data in transparent envelopes, you should not be surprised people can look at (it),” Mahaffey said. Google is not the only one transmitting either such tokens or other important information “in the clear,” Mahaffey said. Much of the data transmitted from PCs and phones is still sent over unencrypted connections. However, Mahaffey said the time has come where services should be moving any potentially sensitive information over a secured connection.

Although such an approach might have been cost prohibitive back in the early days of the Internet, Mahaffey said it is now economically feasible for most services.

In Google’s case, sending the authentication tokens means that an attacker, even without one’s password, can access the account information for the life of the token–in this case around two weeks. Google changed its processes in the latest releases of Android, but the vast majority of users are running Froyo or older versions of the operating system.

Plus, unlike with a computer vulnerability, users don’t have a way to quickly update their phone’s software as new issues are discovered. Instead, updates to the operating system typically take months to get approved by the phone makers and carriers before becoming available to phone owners, if they are made available at all.

At Google’s I/O conference last week, the company outlined a new industry effort aimed at both speeding up software updates and ensuring that they are made available to users for at least 18 months after a device is introduced.

In the meantime, Mahaffey recommends that users try to avoid unsecured Wi-Fi connections altogether, or, if they are using such connections, that they turn off synchronization and be careful what other types of data they send.

For its part, Google says it is aware of the issue, has made some changes and is working on others.

“We’re aware of this issue, have already fixed it for calendar and contacts in the latest versions of Android, and we’re working on fixing it in Picasa,” Google said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110517/most-android-phones-open-to-snooping-report-says/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 01:02:31 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1901 The pocket-size, point-and-shoot digital camera was once a standard part of many consumers’ electronic tool kit. But it has been challenged by smartphones with better and better built-in cameras and photo apps. While they lack some photographic capabilities, like physical zoom lenses, phones are carried everywhere all the time. Plus, they are wirelessly connected to email and the Web, where digital pictures often wind up.

Now, Samsung has introduced a pocket camera that aims to erode the advantages of smartphones—even though the company also produces phones. This new camera, the SH100, has Wi-Fi built in. This isn’t the first camera with built-in Wi-Fi, but Samsung hopes to better capitalize on it. It also competes with the add-on memory card called Eye-Fi, that brings Wi-Fi abilities to almost any camera. It has easy, preconfigured uploading to Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, email and other online destinations, plus a bunch of added wireless features, including cordless transfer of photos to a PC.

I’ve been testing the SH100. It carries a list price of $200 without a memory card but can be found at various merchants for as little as $150. Its wireless capability requires no contract or monthly payment.

My verdict is that the SH100 pretty much does what it promises as a wireless device, and takes very good photos and videos. Unlike on a cellphone, its wireless functions don’t work almost everywhere. Still, for those who would like some of the wireless ease of a phone in a better camera, it might be tempting.

The SH100 is a good-looking, pocket camera with a resolution of 14.2 megapixels, a 5x optical zoom and a wide-angle lens. Smartphones typically have much lower resolution and lack optical zoom lenses.

It has a large, 3-inch touch screen on the back, for framing and viewing shots, and for controlling its many functions. There are only four physical buttons—a home button, a power button, a playback button, and a combination shutter and zoom controller. Everything else is controlled by tapping on icons and menus on the screen.

The SH100 has zoom and wide-angle lenses.

The user interface has been designed to resemble the array of apps on a smartphone. Unfortunately, the SH100 uses a less expensive, and much less responsive, type of touch screen than is typically found on smartphones. So, tapping on icons, scrolling through menus and, especially, typing email addresses and wireless login details, can be a frustrating process for people trained now to use sensitive phone and tablet screens.

This was my biggest gripe about the SH100. In my tests, using its screen required extra pressure, multiple presses and corrections. Samsung implicitly acknowledges this by including a plastic stylus with the camera. Using the stylus makes things easier, but it’s another thing to carry and seems easy to lose.

Samsung says the SH100 is mainly about connectivity, and its photographic capabilities and features aren’t significantly different from those on its other point-and-shoot models. In my tests, it took sharp, vivid photos and videos, indoors and out. It has all the standard settings and effects I’ve seen in other point-and-shoot cameras, including auto and more manual modes, and various preconfigured settings for scenarios such as sunsets or beach photos.

One of its nicer features is something called Magic Frame, which merges a photo you take with a background. For instance, it can place your photo in a poster on the side of a bus-stop shelter, or on the screen of an old black-and-white TV. It also has a 3-D carousel view for browsing through your photos, and another mode where you can flip through pictures by tilting the camera.

The SH100 has a touch screen on the back for viewing photos and controlling functions.

But I mainly tested the camera as a wireless device, with mixed results. I was able to connect almost every time to noncommercial Wi-Fi networks in my home and office, and was easily able to post pictures to my accounts on Facebook and Picasa, and videos to my YouTube account. I also was easily able to email photos. This required a one-time setup process for each online account.

But there were some issues. In one instance, during a meeting with Samsung officials to show me the camera, it wouldn’t work with my office Wi-Fi, though my test unit later did fine in the office. Also, when uploading to Facebook, the camera installs a Facebook app called MashupSocial, which you may or may not want.

More important, the camera’s Wi-Fi won’t work with many commercial Wi-Fi hot spots, such as those in coffee shops or airports, that require a login process via a browser, because it lacks a browser. To compensate, Samsung includes a free three-month trial subscription to Boingo, a service that automates logins to some of these services. After the trial ends, Boingo costs $8 a month, but it is optional.

Also, the camera can’t automatically send any photo you snap. You can only choose to send photos when you are in playback mode. And this is a manual process. You also can’t queue up photos you take outside of W-Fi range for later instant uploading when you get near a compatible Wi-Fi network.

To save battery life, the camera doesn’t remain connected to Wi-Fi. It connects only when you choose to transmit, and then disconnects. This is a relatively slow process. Samsung says the SH100′s battery can shoot more than 200 pictures on a single charge, but that battery life degrades if you use Wi-Fi a lot.

I also successfully tested a couple of other wireless features. I was able to wirelessly transmit photos from the camera to a Windows PC using a special Samsung computer program called Auto Backup. (This doesn’t work on Macs.) I also was able to use a feature called Remote Viewfinder that lets you control the camera remotely from a Samsung smartphone. The camera can also wirelessly beam photos to a compatible TV, but I wasn’t able to test this.

If you’re willing to accept the wireless limitations of the SH100, and value its photographic advantages compared to a phone’s camera, it might offer the right balance for you.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110504/moveable-internet-service/ http://allthingsd.com/20110504/moveable-internet-service/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 01:00:40 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=907 Q:

I have two homes and travel frequently. I would like to use a smartphone’s hot-spot capabilities to totally replace the two Internet services I have to buy for my two homes and to also have when I travel. What are the options?

A:

Many phones that use Google’s Android operating system, as well as Apple’s latest iPhones, can be used as a hot spot to take in the Internet connection from a cellular data service and then pump it out to personal computers and other devices as a Wi-Fi network.

However, in most cases, speeds are slower than home Internet connections and this service usually requires an extra monthly payment to the cellular carrier and data consumption may be limited.

If you want the greatest speed, I would advise using a device on Verizon’s new 4G network, called LTE, if it is available where you live and travel. So far, it’s only offered in one phone, the HTC Thunderbolt. But Verizon also sells dedicated 4G mobile hot-spot devices.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110504/moveable-internet-service/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110504/boingo-wireless-drops-in-first-day-of-trading/ http://allthingsd.com/20110504/boingo-wireless-drops-in-first-day-of-trading/#comments Wed, 04 May 2011 21:00:03 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7339 Paid Wi-Fi specialist Boingo Wireless saw its stock drop Wednesday in the first day of trading after its public offering. The stock priced at $13.50 a share, toward the high end of its expected range. However, it opened down and kept going, closing at $12.10, down 10.37 percent.

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