AllThingsD » widgets

Sony's SmartWatch Not Ready for Primetime

Lauren Goode — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:00:15 +0000

Watches with some computing functions have been around — in theory and form — for decades, but they’ve generally been bulky, super geeky and aimed at hard-core tech enthusiasts.

Now, techie watches are gaining some traction, as part of the growing trend of wearable devices. Apple’s iPod nano can be worn with a wristband, creating a music player and watch in one. Other electronics makers, like Sony, Motorola and the minds behind the Pebble watch project on Kickstarter are incorporating Bluetooth into “smart” watches. Wearers can wirelessly connect the watch to their smartphones to receive quick text, email and social notifications and to decide whether that call or email is worth answering. They can also control some smartphone apps, such as a music app, from the face of the watch.

This week, I’ve been testing Sony’s latest entrant in the market, the $150 SmartWatch. It’s Sony’s second attempt at a watch that works with a compatible smartphone to show notifications and allow the wearer to control apps from the face of the watch.

[ See post to watch video ]

After five days of wearing the watch, I found this smart watch to be less than intuitive. The interface of this SmartWatch is confusing, the set-up was tedious and some notifications come through more regularly than others. The watch also doesn’t display time all the time, which conserves battery life, but it isn’t as much of a watch when you look down and see a blank screen.

The SmartWatch is eye-catching. People noticed it and asked about it, because it obviously wasn’t a standard watch, but unlike high-tech watches of the past (like calculator and TV watches), it isn’t clunky and super geeky.

The plastic-and-aluminum watch measures 1.42 inches tall by 1.42 inches wide and 0.3 inch thick — slightly smaller than the iPod nano. The watch itself is black and white, but wristbands are available in up to six different colors.

It has a 1.3-inch OLED display, though its app icons aren’t as bright as those on the iPod nano.

Sony estimates that the SmartWatch’s battery should last around four days with typical usage, though it could last as long as a week with lighter use. In my experience, it lasted five days, though at times the watch and phone weren’t paired, and notifications sent to the watch were intermittent.

The watch uses Bluetooth 3.0 technology and is meant to work with Android phones only — ideally, Sony’s own smartphones that are “optimized” for the watch, though there are a variety of Android phones that are verified compatible with the watch.

I initially tested the SmartWatch with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone — a phone that isn’t verified to work with the watch. After downloading the necessary software apps onto the phone and pairing the two devices via Bluetooth, I only got two calendar reminders through the watch, even though I linked my calendar, email and social media accounts.

So next I tried a Sony-recommended phone, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray.

Setting up the Xperia phone to work with the watch was a multistep process, as it was with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. On more than one occasion, I had to first “unpair” the two devices, and then pair them again, in order to get them working together properly.

Then I installed an app called LiveWare Manager, which is available for free in the Google app market. Then I connected the watch and smartphone using Bluetooth. After that, I had to install another app on the phone, called SmartWatch. Then I chose which notifications I wanted to receive on the watch — including email, weather, text messages, phone calls and social media updates — and then I had to log into some of those accounts again, despite the fact that I was already logged into those apps on the smartphone.

Finally, I started getting notifications on the SmartWatch.

The watch would buzz, and show a text message, tweet or email excerpt. There was a “View in Phone” option at the bottom of the screen, and if I pressed that, the corresponding app would open on my phone, allowing me to read the full info there.

But I had to press the SmartWatch’s screen firmly and sometimes more than once to get the info to appear. And navigating throughout the various options on the watch was confusing. The watch supports both apps and widgets, a nice touch since widgets show more information right on the screen, but it requires a combination of swiping side to side or up and down to access the apps and widgets. Tapping with two fingers brings you back to the previous screen.

When it came to getting back to the main screen, I was lost. I kept swiping and tapping the phone’s face, with no results. Turns out I had to pinch it to get back to the main screen.

There were some functions of the watch that hinted at the future of easy-to-access data through wearable devices. In one instance, I was on a phone call and the watch buzzed, letting me know that my boss had just emailed, which was helpful. I read a portion of the email on the watch and was able to evaluate whether I needed to get off the phone to address something quickly, or whether it was something I could respond to after the call. When I tried the Find Phone feature on the watch, the Sony Xperia phone chimed, so I could find it buried under the comforter on my bed.

Another feature of the watch that worked well for me were the phone call and SMS notifications. When the Xperia phone rang, the watch’s display immediately lit up to show me who was calling. I had the option to reject the call from the face of the watch or accept it, which would require me to pick up the phone. When I asked someone to send me text messages as a test, they appeared on the watch at the same time they were sent to my phone. I could also send quick, preformulated responses back from the watch.

This was especially useful when I was driving, although the watch’s screen is hard to read in sunlight.

Social media updates appear on the watch, at most, every 15 minutes. There’s an option deep in the phone’s LiveWare Manager app for setting the frequency of such updates, which I only became aware of after my Twitter and Facebook notifications on the watch seemed sporadic. On one hand, I might not want to get constant Twitter notifications on the watch, since I follow more than 800 active Twitterers. But the controlled frequency seemed to negate the point of real-time updates.

Lastly, it’s important to note that in order to work properly, the watch has to be within about 30 feet of the smartphone. This means that when I was on the treadmill at the gym and the Android phone was stuffed in a locker, the two devices weren’t connected and I wasn’t receiving updates on the watch. The watch was effectively just a watch — only, as I said, to save on battery life it doesn’t display constant time, which means I had to keep pressing the power button to see the time of day. Sony said it is at work on a software update that will give the option to have the clock showing on the display at all times.

The point of this kind of watch is to pair with a smartphone and provide quick and easy alerts, but the Sony SmartWatch wasn’t especially easy to use. If you’re an Android smartphone user and are in the market for this kind of compatible device, I’d hold out for a smarter smart watch.

Collecta: Another Real-time Search Engine Bites the Dust

Liz Gannes — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:09:05 +0000

Los Angeles-based start-up Collecta has shuttered its real-time search business, including a destination site, API and publisher widgets. The two-year-old company isn’t closing down, but will pivot to unannounced and related projects, said CEO Gerry Campbell in a phone conversation today.

Asked whether creating a real-time search engine is a viable start-up business, Campbell answered quickly: “No.” His company’s pivot is the latest of multiple efforts in the space; last year, OneRiot gave up its search business to pursue real-time advertising, and Ellerdale sold to Flipboard to help add relevance analysis to its social magazine app.

The exit of Collecta and its competitors from real-time search is remarkable given they had swarmed to the space only a couple of years ago.

In 2009, many entrepreneurs and their investors bet that real-time search was the next frontier, recognizing that search engines were having trouble handling the onslaught of status updates and fresh information streaming onto the Web from Twitter and elsewhere.

Given the companies’ emphasis on speed, perhaps it’s not surprising that they failed and moved on so quickly.

Campbell would not say how many employees Collecta had laid off as part of the change, but he maintained the company has plenty of money in the bank from the $4.7 million it raised last spring from Dace Ventures and True Ventures. Mashable reported earlier today in its story about the Collecta changes that co-founder Jack Moffitt is no longer with the company.

Campbell said Collecta will apply its “very serious technology” to other real-time projects, but it will not become a real-time ad engine like OneRiot.

Who’s left in real-time search? There are still a few, including Wowd and Topsy.

Topsy’s tweet search is much more comprehensive than Twitter’s own, and it serves half a billion queries per month, mostly through its API, Topsy co-founder Rishab Aiyer Ghosh told NetworkEffect via email today. And while Google and Bing also index tweets (and Bing has an extensive relationship with Facebook), they have not fully incorporated social updates into their core search engines.

“With TweetMeme, CrowdEye and Collecta all pivoting out of it, Topsy may be the only real-time/social search engine left,” Ghosh said. He maintained that there’s still an opportunity to build an independent real-time search engine “done right,” despite the competition dropping like flies. Topsy has raised $15 million in funding from investors including BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners and the Founders Fund.

Topsy Hands Out Real-Time Search Widgets

Liz Gannes — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:00:52 +0000

Real-time search engine Topsy today is launching customizable widgets for publishers to display topical tweets.

The company’s “social modules” dynamically populate with fresh content on any topic.

So, for instance, a news organization could automatically input the tags associated with its articles into a module, and on each page it would show relevant tweets about similar topics (and not just lame redundant retweets of the article itself, like you often see).

Or a site could show a live-updating widget that displays its most tweeted articles that day. Publisher IDG is already using the modules on some of its sites.

Anyone can create a self-service module, and Topsy will offer premium features such as analytics and revenue-shared advertising. Content within the modules is automatically filtered for profanity and language preference.

You might ask why Topsy and its random blog widgets are important. For one thing, Topsy is among the few independent players remaining in real-time search, with OneRiot pivoting to focus on ads, and Ellerdale acquired by Flipboard. Twitter does have its own search service, but it stores only a week of tweets at a time.

Topsy organizes its index of eight billion tweets using social signals, such as figuring out which accounts on Twitter are influential and which tweeted links are important, something Google and Bing are only starting to do. That’s a change from the dominant PageRank mindset, where a parent domain carries a certain weight without differentiation for all the different people who have accounts on it, from influential authorities to spammers.

And while it’s true that few Web pages need any more widgets than they already have, prominent tech publishers like Business Insider and TechCrunch use Twitter sidebar widgets from PostUp (formerly TweetUp) that show a rotation of promoted accounts. A more timely and dynamic alternative like Topsy Social Modules might be more useful.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like a GeekPhone? Sprint's Android Makeover

Ina Fried — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:00:35 +0000

Cellphone carriers have had a relatively easy time marketing Android phones to the early adopters who were looking for a powerful smartphone they could customize to their liking.

That, after all, is what it was built for.

But a looming challenge is how to tailor both the phones and their marketing to make them more appealing to all those mainstream users who are buying their first smartphone.

For Sprint, one step in this process has been the creation of Sprint ID–a system that lets phone buyers customize their device with one or more themed “packs,” which install a series of themes, widgets and applications with a single click.

Sprint launched the effort back at the CTIA show in October, but is now getting up to speed by both adding more devices compatible with Sprint ID and by lining up some brand-name content. This week, Sprint announced a new MTV-themed pack that combines news from MTV, music from Pandora and an app that helps highlight new artists based on social networking trends.

There’s clearly some room here for device makers and carriers. Even Google’s Andy Rubin, the father of Android, concedes that thus far Android has been best suited for techies.

“I would probably characterize Android as it is today as an early adopters’ platform,” Rubin said at last week’s D: Dive Into Mobile. “It’s for the tech enthusiast and people who are married to the tech enthusiast.”

That is quickly changing, though, with Android making up a greater and greater percentage of phone sales at Sprint and elsewhere.

“You are moving to the mass majority,” said David Owens, Sprint’s vice president of consumer marketing. “That’s not a group of people that are going to go in and customize their device.”

Sprint ID allows them to pick an interest and get all kinds of related content. From there, users can uninstall components or add other applications, but Owens said it gives users a starting point and Sprint a way to stand out from the competition.

Initially, Sprint ID packs were offered as options on two Android models, and more recently Sprint added the lower-end Optimus S to the mix. Owens said those who have one of the three phones have downloaded, on average, two of the themed packs. Sprint plans to eventually offer Sprint ID on all its Android devices.

Sprint ID opens the door to some alternative revenue possibilities for advertising or sales of premium content, but currently all the packs are free, and Sprint is not banking on much in the way of additional bucks for now.

So far, it has about 15 of the different packs, each geared to specific topics and identities, ranging from the MTV pack, to one for golf enthusiasts to several targeted specifically to Latinos. (Latino MTV watchers who love to play 18 holes needn’t worry–users can install up to six different packs and switch among them.)

What has been lacking until now is much in the way of brand power, though Owens said Sprint hopes to change this with MTV and other packs in the pipeline. He wouldn’t give any hints, but said there should be more announcements by CES.

Microsoft's New Windows Phone 7: Novel But Lacking

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:03:42 +0000

Nearly four years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, and more than two years after Google introduced its first Android smartphone, Microsoft is launching its effort to catch up. On Nov. 8, AT&T and T-Mobile will begin selling the first phones powered by the software maker’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system.

I’ve been testing two of these initial Windows Phone 7 phones, the Samsung Focus from AT&T and the HTC HD7 from T-Mobile; each will cost $200. Both are slender phones with large screens and virtual keyboards, though the Samsung is thinner and lighter than the HTC.

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft has imposed tight requirements on the new Windows Phone 7 phones—including fast processors, decent screens and adequate memory. However, in my testing this time, I didn’t focus on the hardware. Instead, I bored in on the new Microsoft operating system, set to show up on nine phones this year, including some with physical keyboards.

My conclusion is that Microsoft has used its years in the smartphone wilderness to come up with a user interface that is novel and attractive, that stands out from the Apple and Google approaches, and that works pretty well. Instead of multiple screens filled with small app icons, or the occasional widget, Windows phones use large, dynamic tiles that can give you certain information, like your next appointment, at a glance. And it has special “hubs” for things like contacts and entertainment that use bold, attractive interfaces and offer personalized, updating information.

The Samsung Focus’s large touch tiles

However, despite having all that time to study its rivals, Microsoft has inexplicably omitted from Windows Phone 7 key features now common, or becoming so, on competitive phones. These missing features include copy and paste, visual voicemail, multitasking of third-party apps, and the ability to do video calling and to use the phone to connect other devices to the Internet. The Android phones and the iPhone handle all these things today.

Plus, because it has waited so long to enter the super-smartphone market, Microsoft is starting way behind in the all-important category of available third-party apps. At launch next month, the company hopes to have about 1,000 apps available for the Windows Phone 7 platform, compared with nearly 100,000 for Android phones and around 300,000 for the iPhone. That means Windows phones will, by definition, be less versatile than their main competitors, at least at launch.

In addition, Microsoft, unlike Apple, has ceded prominent home-screen real estate to the phone makers and carriers so they can push their own apps, like subscription-based TV and navigation services.

To be sure, Windows Phone 7 has a few advantages. These include built-in mobile versions of Microsoft Office (present for years on earlier Microsoft-powered phones) and of its popular Xbox Live gaming service, which also interacts with Xbox game consoles. There is a nice feature that allows the camera to be used quickly, even if the phone is locked. And search works particularly well, including a mode that allows you to enter search commands by voice from any screen. Phone calling also worked just fine, with few failed calls, good voice quality and easy connection to a Bluetooth device I tried.

But I couldn’t find a killer innovation that would be likely to make iPhone or Android users envious, except possibly for dedicated Xbox users. Even the built-in Office can be replicated with third-party Office-compatible apps on competing platforms; and the iPhone and Android phones also can interoperate with Microsoft’s corporate Exchange email, calendar and contact system.

So for now, I see Windows Phone 7 as mostly getting Microsoft into the game, and replacing the stale, complicated Windows Mobile system that preceded it. It will get better. The company is already working on a copy and paste system, and said it is coming early next year. But, today, I see Windows Phone 7 as inferior to iPhone and Android for most average users. It’s simply not fully baked yet.

The main feature of Windows Phone 7 is the Start screen, which takes the form of a long vertical list of tiles that can represent either an app or a hub. The phones lack multiple home screens or traditional folders for grouping apps. These tiles are dynamic: They can show things like rotating photos of friends, or how many unread emails you have.

Microsoft doesn’t intend for you to place every app or feature on the Start screen. Instead, some apps, like games, go automatically into one of the special tile hubs, which combine related functions. And all other apps pre-installed or added to your phone go into another long master list you can see by flicking aside the tile view or tapping an arrow.

It’s a clean, simple, different approach. But there is a downside. As you “pin” your favorite apps, contacts, photos or Web sites to the Start screen, the list of tiles grows longer, and you have to scroll further and further to reach some. There is no shortcut for getting back to the top of such a list, as there is on the iPhone.

The hubs have a level of social and functional integration seen on some Android phones and on Palm’s webOS operating system, now owned by Hewlett-Packard. For instance, in the People hub, you not only see your local contacts, but those synced from Facebook or Microsoft’s own Windows Live service. This hub, like the others, borrows the elegant interface from Microsoft’s failed Zune music player, so you can flick left and right to see just recent contacts or to see your friends’ status updates. But the People hub doesn’t have Twitter.

Microsoft sees this combination of tiles and hubs as a “glance and go” interface for quickly seeing important information without opening apps, as on the iPhone. But I was disappointed that more information wasn’t presented on the tiles. For instance, unlike in some Android apps and widgets I’ve used, a stock market tile and a weather tile I downloaded didn’t show on their surfaces the latest information.

The calendar, which syncs with Exchange, Windows Live, or Google, can’t sync with Yahoo or MobileMe, and lacks a week view. The email program syncs with a variety of services, but lacks a unified inbox, so you have to clutter your Start screen with separate tiles for each account.

Another downside for some users: The phones can be used in horizontal view for photos and Web pages, or for typing email, but some screens, like the Start screen and hubs, are fixed in vertical mode.

Microsoft has done a good job with the Web browser, which I found generally comparable in speed and features to the iPhone and Android browsers. But unlike on some new Android phones, it doesn’t support Adobe Flash content.

The People hub borrows the elegant interface from Microsoft’s failed Zune music player, so you can flick left and right to see just recent contacts or to see your friends’ status updates.

The built-in Office suite is very nice. It can link to Microsoft’s SharePoint corporate online document system. One of its apps, OneNote, also synced in my tests with Microsoft’s consumer-focused SkyDrive Web file-storage system. It has a nice feature that makes it easy to jump to sections of long documents, allows for making comments on files, and lets you see presentations broadcast over the Internet.

However, this new mobile Office failed to open a simple Word document I tried. Microsoft says this plain document had some hidden corruption, but it opened on an iPhone and Android, and was editable in their Quickoffice app. Microsoft says it is working on a fix.

Music, video and photos all worked well, and you can use a Zune subscription on the phone. I was easily able to sync media files with a Windows PC using a new version of the Zune software, and I also tried a pre-release version of the new Macintosh Zune software, which is more limited, but also worked properly.

The Microsoft app store, called Marketplace, worked fine, and has a nice try-before-you-buy feature for some apps.

Last but not least is the Xbox Live hub, the center for gaming. It contains games from Microsoft and other developers, and includes your avatar from the Xbox Live service. You can socialize with, and play against, others on the service. For Xbox Live fans, this is mobile heaven.

Overall, I can’t recommend Windows Phone 7 as being on a par with iPhone or Android—at least not yet. Unless you’re an Xbox Live user, or rely on Microsoft’s SharePoint corporate Web-based document system, it isn’t as good or as versatile as its rivals.

Find all of Walt’s columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com.

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

Yahoo Connects With Top European TV Maker

Voices — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:30:25 +0000

Vestel Group, the largest television manufacturer in Europe, announced today that early next year it would begin turning out Yahoo Connected TVs, bringing widgets, apps and all manner of Internet entertainment into living rooms across the continent.

Reports: Google Buys Slide for Its Social Gaming Play

Voices — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:03:47 +0000

According to sources talking to TechCrunch, the New York Times and others, Google has purchased app maker Slide for $182 million (or maybe $228 million) as part of its push (along with its $150 million Zynga investment) into social gaming. Slide, which has chewed through several business models in its five-year history, now makes virtual goods and entertainment widgets for social sites. Neither party has confirmed the deal yet.

A New Scheme to Get Web Surfers to Stay Put: Photos

Peter Kafka — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:19:28 +0000

Thanks for visiting! Hey! Where are you going?

That’s a common refrain for most Web publishers, who see readers stop by their sites for a very brief looksee, then bounce away, drawn by a new link. And it’s one of the reasons publishers are so smitten with the idea of apps, which promise to keep readers corralled.

But even if single-publication apps really take off (I’m skeptical), the Web isn’t going away. Which means publishers are constantly searching for new honeypots to keep their users on their sites.

Here’s a new one, from Brand Affinity Technologies: A scheme that turns photos on a publisher’s site into a menu of widgets that offer related information. So a photo of LeBron James, for instance, will offer up readers a Twitter stream, YouTube collection and other data feeds about the sports star.

Ideally, the widgets are supposed to give surfers more reason to stick around and spend time on the site; BAT sells ads adjacent to the widgets and shares revenue with the publishers.

Easier to show than tell, so here are two clips that demonstrate how the tech works:

If you want to see for yourself, check out the New York Daily News, Fox Sports and some Hearst sites, all of which are supposed to be using the technology today.

If this works, it will be a nice new revenue stream for BAT, whose core business is marrying sports starts with digital marketing campaigns. The company, which says it did $30 million last year, is run by brothers Chad and Ryan Steelberg, who are best known as the guys who sold radio ad startup dMarc to Google (GOOG) for $102 million in 2006 (Update: BAT wants us to know that Google ended up paying more than $400 million after factoring earnouts.)

[Image credit: brainware3000]

Galaxy Phones From Samsung Are Worthy iPhone Rivals

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:03:30 +0000

The war of the super-smartphones continues to heat up, and, at the moment, most of the combat seems to be between Apple’s iPhone and the multiplying array of competitors running Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system.

[ See post to watch video ]

Despite the weak economy, consumers seem to crave these hand-held computers, which typically cost around $200. Apple (AAPL) this week said it can’t make enough of its new iPhone 4 models to meet strong demand. HTC, the Taiwanese-based manufacturer behind many of the better-known Android phones, also is struggling to meet demand for models like the Droid Incredible on Verizon (VZ) and the Evo 4G on Sprint (S).

Now, the Korean electronics giant, Samsung, has begun rolling out an impressive new line of iPhone competitors that run on Android. These new super-smartphones are called the Galaxy S Series, and Samsung has managed to get all four top U.S. wireless carriers to agree to start selling them this summer. They share most of the same guts, but carry different model names and exterior designs.

I’ve been testing the first two Galaxy S phones, the T-Mobile Vibrant and the AT&T (T) Captivate, both of which cost $200 with a two-year contract. Neither has all the features of Apple’s latest model, like a front-facing camera for video calls or an ultra–high resolution screen, but they are worthy competitors. They have some attributes the iPhone lacks, like bigger screens and better integration of social networking.

The AT&T Captivate and T-Mobile Vibrant have bigger screens than the iPhone but lack frontfacing cameras.

The T-Mobile Vibrant has rounded corners and a prominent border that make it look very much like last year’s iPhone 3GS model. The AT&T Captivate is more angular and, to my taste, looks sleeker. Though the two phones share the same battery, the Vibrant claims better battery life. The Vibrant is longer but a bit lighter.

Both phones are multi-touch models which lack physical keyboards, though the upcoming Sprint version, the Epic, will have a slide-out physical keyboard and a front-facing camera.

For Android phone makers, a key challenge is to differentiate their models from others offering the same operating system. Samsung has chosen to do so by combining a design that’s almost as thin as the iPhone 4 with a generous, four-inch screen. That’s significantly bigger than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display, but smaller than the huge 4.3-inch screen on the Evo and the new Motorola (MOT) Droid X, which would force the phones to be larger.

In my tests, phone calls on both models were crisp and clear. Reception on the AT&T model was about the same as on the iPhone 4, which only works on AT&T. The five-megapixel camera took sharp pictures. The camera also did a fine job with video, which is high definition. Battery life was good, though not exceptional. The phones lasted through an average day of varied use.

The screen on the Galaxy S is based on a different technology than those on most other smartphones. It’s called Super AMOLED, and Samsung claims it has better color reproduction, contrast, outdoor visibility and brightness. To my eye, the Galaxy S screens did look very good, but seemed no better, indoors or outdoors, than the iPhone 4′s screen and were slightly less sharp.

Samsung has also added some of its own touches to Android. Users can add Samsung “widgets,” such as a Buddies Now module that quickly allows access to your closest contacts. There’s also something called the Social Hub, which integrates social-networking updates and media with contact entries. This is a common feature on Android and Palm phones, but isn’t present on the iPhone.

While it’s improving rapidly, Android still isn’t quite as smooth as the iPhone’s software, and on some Android models I’ve tested, it can slow down or have a jerky quality. Not so on these Samsung models. Performance in every function I tested was snappy.

Another nice touch on the Samsung models is a generous amount of internal memory—16 gigabytes—in addition to the common removable memory card, which in this case holds two gigabytes but can be replaced at extra cost with a roomier card.

The T-Mobile Vibrant.

Also, Samsung says the new phones can hold up to two gigabytes of third-party apps, the most I’ve seen on an Android phone, which, unlike the iPhone, places limits on total app storage.

Like other Android phones, the two Samsung models offer around 65,000 third-party apps, including popular titles like the Kindle e-book reader and Facebook. That’s far fewer than the iPhone’s 225,000 available apps, but well above the measly 7,000 or so apps available for the BlackBerry.

There are some drawbacks. Like other Android phones, the Galaxy S models don’t come with a program like iTunes, which allows easy synchronization with content on a PC or Mac. You can plug the phones into a computer for manual transfer of files, but this only works smoothly on Windows PCs. On Macs, you must turn on something called “USB debugging” to make this work.

I also wasn’t crazy about the home, search and other buttons on these phones, which are found on a panel below the screen but not easily visible until you touch the panel and light the buttons up. That, in effect, means you have to touch twice to use them.

Still, for consumers who prefer Android, or who—in the case of the Vibrant and the coming Sprint and Verizon versions—would rather not be on AT&T, the Galaxy S phones present an appealing alternative to the iPhone.

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.

Google Buys LabPixies

John Paczkowski — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:45:11 +0000

Google has acquired its first Israeli company, Web and mobile applications outfit LabPixies. Among the first companies to build gadgets for iGoogle, LabPixies ranks as the personalized homespage service’s top developer. No surprise, then, that Google (GOOG) would snap it up to juice social app development in the iGoogle ecosystem.

Said Google’s Dan Loeb, “We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall.”

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, though Israeli financial news site TheMarker pegs LabPixies’ purchase price at about $25 million.

RockYou Looks Past China's Internet Users

Loretta Chao — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:00:13 +0000

China has the attention of RockYou, one of the earliest developers of widgets for social networks. But it isn’t China’s nearly 400 million Internet users that are the main draw–it’s the nation’s developers.

RockYou CTO and co-founder Jia Shen said at a social game summit in Beijing Friday that the company, which plans to expand its presence in Asia, is “actively” looking at acquisition targets in China rather than more users because social games are less lucrative here than in other markets, mostly due to a lack of openness of Chinese social networking sites.

According to Shen, companies that operate social networking Web sites in China, including Tencent Holdings Ltd., have huge user numbers, but demand an average of 40 percent to 50 percent of revenue from the games distributed on their Web sites, or more than is standard in other markets. And though a higher rate of Chinese users pay to play the games, they spend much less, he said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Better Stop Holding Your Breath for a Verizon iPhone

John Paczkowski — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:57:25 +0000

If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain this iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid? (Click on video below.)

“iDon’t have a real keyboard
iDon’t run simultaneous apps
iDon’t take night shots
iDon’t allow open development
iDon’t customize
iDon’t run widgets
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries
Everything iDon’t
DROID DOES”

Shown on Fox and CBS (CBS) during a pair of NFL football games Sunday afternoon, the ad clearly positions Droid as the mythical iPhone killer. And while that might seem foolhardy, perhaps even hubristic, those who’ve seen the Motorola (MOT)-designed device say it’s at the very least a worthy iPhone rival.

Says Boy Genius: “[This is] the Android device to beat, and easily the most impressive. From what we’ve been told, Google had a direct hand in the Motorola Droid. Something to the point of almost dictating every move Motorola made when designing and making the phone….the Droid, even in its non-final form, is the most impressive phone we’ve used since the iPhone. It’s positively amazing.”

A gushing endorsement of an unreleased device and as such, to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it’s hard to believe Verizon (VZ) would go all out here without good reason. And make no mistake, the company is going all out, even to the point of licensing the “Droid” trademark from Lucasfilm.

This past weekend’s TV commercial and a Droid teaser site are clearly the beginning of a major marketing push intended to position Droid as the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s better, or at least its equal. Little wonder then that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt was so upbeat about Android’s future during the search engine company’s earnings call last week.

“Android adoption is literally about to explode,” Schmidt said. “You have all the necessary conditions, you have the vendors, you have the distribution and so forth. This is a very critical period with all of everything being delivered.”

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HTC's Hero May Be Your Scene

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:02:02 +0000

Super-smart phones based on Google’s Android operating system have been relatively slow to take off since the first one appeared a year ago. Despite Google’s iconic brand, they have yet to develop the strong bond with U.S. consumers achieved by the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry or the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. And, after a year, Android has less than 10% of the 85,000 apps the iPhone now offers.

[ See post to watch video ]

But Android is beginning to blossom in the market for this class of device, which is really a hand-held computer that performs many laptop-like functions.

In August, T-Mobile began offering a new $200 myTouch Android phone. Motorola (MOT) will shortly launch a new $200 Android model called the CLIQ. And, on Oct. 11, Sprint (S) will start selling perhaps the most unusual Android phone so far, the $180 HTC Hero. I’ve been testing the Hero, a touch-screen phone without a physical keyboard that has some important distinctions from earlier Android models. In general, I like the Hero and can recommend it to Sprint customers, or others looking for something powerful, but different.

HTC, a veteran Taiwan-based maker of phones, has altered Android more than anyone else so far. It has been gradually developing its own signature software layer that sits atop phone operating systems. With the Hero, it has applied this software for the first time to an Android phone, and that’s what sets the Hero apart from its Android brethren. The latest, beefed-up, version of this HTC software is called “Sense.”

Sense includes handsome, large widgets with extra features that go beyond the vanilla Android experience supplied to everyone by Google (GOOG). So the Hero looks and behaves somewhat differently. For instance, a contact page in the address book application consolidates that contact’s Facebook and Flickr accounts. The music player and photo album look better, and the Hero with Sense can use Microsoft’s Exchange service to synchronize mail, calendars and contacts.

Sprint’s HTC Hero

Sense also offers something called Scenes—entire collections of sets of screens and apps, either canned or customized, that can change the phone software’s look and feel. With just a couple of clicks, you could switch between a work-oriented “scene,” that prominently features apps such as a stock tracker and your work email, and an entertainment-oriented scene filled with the music player, photo album and other apps.

As with Sprint’s Palm (PALM) Pre, the Hero’s price is a bit deceptive. To get the phone for $180, you must remember to mail in a rebate form worth $100. At purchase, you have to put up $280. On the other hand, Sprint’s monthly fees can be much cheaper than those for other carriers. You’ll have to pay at least $70 a month to use the Hero, the same minimum fee that AT&T charges iPhone owners. But Sprint’s fee, unlike AT&T’s (T), includes unlimited text messaging and unlimited free calls to any mobile number on any network.

The Hero’s hardware isn’t especially beautiful. It’s a dull grey, noticeably thicker than the iPhone, with a smaller screen and six buttons plus a trackball, which adds another navigation option to the touch screen. It’s the same length as an iPhone, but is a bit narrower and lighter. It comes with just two gigabytes of memory, compared with eight gigabytes on the $99 iPhone and 16 gigabytes on Apple’s $199 model, though the Hero’s memory, unlike the iPhone’s, is expandable via a hard-to-reach slot under its removable back cover.

One big drawback is battery life. Sprint is only claiming up to four hours of talk time for the Hero, versus five hours for the Pre and iPhone. But, unlike the iPhone’s, the Hero’s battery is removable. Another drawback: I sometimes found the touch screen unresponsive, requiring multiple pokes at an icon.

On the plus side, the Hero has a much higher resolution camera than the iPhone’s or Pre’s—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It also functions as a video camera, and in my tests, both still photos and videos I took looked very good. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were clear and strong, and the phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in addition to Sprint’s high-speed network, which in my view is better than its reputation. Web browsing was adequate.

HTC’s Sense gives the Hero seven screens on which to place apps, versus Android’s standard three screens.

And, in addition to the standard Android apps and the 8,000 downloadable apps from Android’s Market app store, there are a variety of large, beautiful HTC “widgets” you can use. The downside of these is that they can occupy an entire screen.

The most impressive widget is called People. It’s an address book in which each contact’s page features a scrolling bar at the bottom with icons that allow you to see that person’s most recent Facebook status, photos from Facebook and Flickr, plus emails and text messages she’s sent to you and recent calls between you. This is somewhat similar to Palm’s Synergy feature, which is also based around people.

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

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.

Intel's PC.com Site Steps Into Vegas Spotlight

Don Clark — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:01:46 +0000

Intel (INTC) has never been much associated with glitz. The chipmaker, after all, essentially sells high-tech widgets that few people think much about these days. But nearly everybody at times has a question or a complaint about PCs–the inspiration for an Intel-sponsored Web site that plans to add to the star power in Las Vegas next week.

The PC.com site, which posts articles and other resources to help computer owners and prospective buyers, was launched with very little promotion last year. Though it doesn’t go out of its way to hide the affiliation with Intel, it doesn’t exactly advertise it either–preferring to keep a bit of editorial distance from its deep-pocketed parent.

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Web 3.0: The Salesforce.com Web

John Paczkowski — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:00:43 +0000

If the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are “groundbreaking” Facebook widgets, easy access to dumb capital and haughty start-ups dangerously over-leveraged on other companies’ assets what (or who) will define the Web 3.0 epoch?

The answer’s obvious isn’t it? Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

Why? Because he says so, that’s why.

Speaking at the company’s DreamForce Europe event, Benioff said that Web 3.0 will be the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) era. A fascinating definition–convenient too, since this is precisely the sort of business Salesforce.com (CRM) is in. “We think Web 3.0 is now upon us. It’s the era of platforms,” said Benioff. “New platforms are coming right out of the cloud. It’s time to make a choice. You can continue to build your applications in the software model or you can move your applications to the new model of cloud computing. There is a new way to build your applications.”

So Web 3.0 is not, as Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, once suggested, the semantic Web–”day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives handled by machines talking to machines.” Rather, it’s Web 2.0 with another 1.0’s worth of marketing BS. The “Whatever-I-Say-It-Is Web”–the “Al Franken Decade” of the Internet age.

Well, the “me” decade is almost over, and good riddance, and far as I’m concerned. … That’s right. I believe we’re entering what I like to call the Al Franken Decade. Oh, for me, Al Franken, the ’80s will be pretty much the same as the ’70s. I’ll still be thinking of me, Al Franken. But for you, you’ll be thinking more about how things affect me, Al Franken. When you see a news report, you’ll be thinking, ‘I wonder what Al Franken thinks about this thing?’, ‘I wonder how this inflation thing is hurting Al Franken?’ And you women will be thinking, ‘What can I wear that will please Al Franken?’, or ‘What can I not wear?’ You know, I know a lot of you out there are thinking, ‘Why Al Franken?’ Well, because I thought of it, and I’m on TV, so I’ve already gotten the jump on you.”

LinkedIn Makes Its Move

John Paczkowski — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:00:32 +0000

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SuperP&L! Application Adds Serious Fun to LinkedIn

John Paczkowski — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:01:13 +0000

LinkedIn, Facebook’s dour older brother, joined Google’s OpenSocial development platform today, announcing the Intelligent Application Platform–a service that will open the social-networking site to third-party software developers.

Like the Facebook Platform, “InApps” allows developers to create productivity applications for LinkedIn or to port some of the site’s features to outside Web sites. But unlike Facebook, these widgets must be approved by LinkedIn before they’re deployed.

Clearly, the company has no intention of offering users the chance to send electronic hamburgers to each other, or pop their zits. “What we are trying to do is make professionals more productive by making them able to find one another, learn more about each other and communicate efficiently with each other,” LinkedIn Chief Executive Dan Nye told Reuters. “It’s not a place where you waste two hours of your time trying to find a date.”

Launching in concert with InApps are a new look and a number of new features designed to make the site more interactive. Among them: a news feed customized by the company and the industry in which a user works and an interesting BusinessWeek application that lets you see how you’re connected through LinkedIn to people and companies mentioned in its articles. With such upgrades, LinkedIn–which claims 17 million registered users globally and about 5 million unique per month–hopes to dominate the business of business networking. Personal networking and self-expression, it seems to be saying, are best left to others.

But is it reasonable to think that people will continue to maintain two social-networking profiles–one for their personal life and another for their professional life? LinkedIn CEO Nye says it is, especially given the value proposition LinkedIn offers its users. “…People have profiles on both services,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “But on LinkedIn, you’re not going to get poked, there’s no zombies and you’re not going to share your music list. … Now when someone says, ‘Hey, let’s go down and meet at Starbucks,’ you don’t have to ask five people if they’re Tom.”

SuperP&L! Application Adds Serious Fun to LinkedIn

John Paczkowski — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:01:13 +0000

Web 3.0? But We’re Not Finished Mocking Web 2.0 Yet!

John Paczkowski — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:00:20 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

If Facebook's Worth $15 Billion, Then My Stupid Idea's Got to Be Good for $10 Mil

John Paczkowski — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:01:53 +0000

Apparently the vainglory from which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to suffer is communicable and spreading rapidly throughout the social network’s developer community.

Encouraged by reports that Microsoft is considering a $500 million investment that would value Facebook at up to $15 billion, some software engineers are assigning hyperbolic valuations to the Facebook widgets they’ve developed, though the business models on which they’re based are even more unproven than those of Facebook itself.

To wit, RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, who’s convinced his Super Wall widget, an enhanced version of Facebook’s Wall bulletin board, is guaranteed a not-at-all-widget-sized financial windfall. “If you told me you were going to write me a check for $10 million, I’d say, ‘Forget it,’ ” Tokuda told the New York Times of his asking price for Super Wall. “This is a completely new channel of delivering content to users and letting them communicate. Owning that over the long stretch can be worth a lot.”

No. Owning the “users” over the long stretch might be worth something. That’s why Facebook is being given these frothy valuations. Owning a widget easily replicated by the company that owns those users? If you get $10 million for that, you’re luckier than Zuckerberg.

If Facebook's Worth $15 Billion, Then My Stupid Idea's Got to Be Good for $10 Mil

John Paczkowski — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:01:53 +0000

Apparently the vainglory from which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to suffer is communicable and spreading rapidly throughout the social network’s developer community.

If You Like the Web so Much, Why Don't You Just Marry It?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:00:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

If You Like the Web so Much, Why Don't You Just Marry It?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:00:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Google's New Mission: 'Organize the World's Information and Make It Universally AdSensible'

John Paczkowski — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:40:58 +0000

In its latest attempt to organize the world’s information and make it universally AdSensible (har-de-har-har), Google is introducing a rich-media, dynamic ad widget. Google Gadgets, as the company calls them, are essentially content-heavy interactive ads tricked out with the contextual targeting capabilities of Google’s AdSense network. “Web sites within Web sites,” as Google explains.

Or rather promotional Web sites within Web sites. Imagine Facebook’s “Top Friends” widget if it were instead filled with a list of, say, Clorox products. “Consumers are pulling in content from multiple sources,” said Christian Oestlien, the Google product manager overseeing the Gadgets program. “It is what we are calling the componentization of the Web. The Web is sort of breaking apart into smaller pieces.”

The announcement of this new ad avail is a timely one. According to online measurement company comScore, more than 48% of Internet users in the United States–over 87 million people–use widgets. That’s the sort of audience metric marketers swoon over. And Google knows this all too well, although apparently it’s a proconsumer initiative and not a money-making one when viewed through its “don’t-be-evil” lens. Said Oestlien, “We’re not trying to monetize every single event that happens in a creative, [we want advertisers] to make rich creative ads that are really useful to the end user.”

Google's New Mission: 'Organize the World's Information and Make It Universally AdSensible'

John Paczkowski — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:40:58 +0000