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Posts Tagged ‘people’

Microsoft on copy and paste in Windows Phone 7 Series: ‘people don’t do that’

Microsoft certainly set off a firestorm of controversy yesterday with the revelation that Windows Phone 7 Series won’t have copy and paste, since it doesn’t necessarily line up with what the company has said in private before — and the issue seems to have gotten even more clouded as people have started hacking around the emulator. So let’s set the record straight on what we were told, since it wasn’t ambiguous in any way: Microsoft says leaving clipboard operations out was a conscious design decision based on user research showing that people don’t actually use copy and paste very often, and that instead 7 Series features a systemwide data detection service which recognizes things ike phone numbers and addresses so you can take action on them. Third-party apps can hook into this service, so that an email address can be routed to the email client of your choice, but there’s no copy and paste functionality. We specifically asked about Office and OneNote, and we were told that Microsoft’s research shows that people mostly want to view and comment on documents, not move things around. We also specifically asked if copy and paste was coming later and were told no, although we’d guess that it’s at least being worked on for a future version. Don’t take it from us, though — listen to Microsoft’s Todd Brix for yourself:

Microsoft on copy and paste in Windows Phone 7 Series: ‘people don’t do that’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LoKast launches a ‘disposable social network” for sharing media from your iPhone

There are a number of companies at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin offering their own way of sharing your location with friends. LoKast, an app from a company called NearVerse, is launching a mobile app with a compelling spin on that idea — instead of sharing your location with people elsewhere, you share media with people in the same location.

In other words, when you open the LoKast app, you get a list of anyone else who also has LoKast open in your proximity (about 300 feet). When you click on their profile, you can see and download any content they’ve uploaded for sharing, including contacts, photos, songs, videos, and links. For example, if you’re at a conference, you might share the contact information of yourself and business partners, so anyone else at the conference knows how to reach you. Or if you’re at a concert, you could bring a favorite playlist, which all the other concert attendees would be able to view. And users could tailor the content they’re sharing to the occasion.

Co-founder Boris Bogatin describes LoKast as a way to link our online and physical activities.

“We’re doing all this internet stuff, we do internet or we do physical, but we don’t do both,” Bogatin said. “But the physical stuff is so powerful and rich.”

Philadelphia-based NearVerse has paid particular attention to the music side of the app. In most cases, you’re not sharing complete songs, but rather short clips and a link to purchase the song on iTunes. But musicians can also create accounts on LoKast where they make their songs available for free download. So if a band threw a promotional concert, they wouldn’t have to give out demo CDs. Instead they just ask everyone to download the songs from their LoKast portal. Then when all those fans wgo to other events, they could offer those songs as free downloads to other people, allowing the music to spread.

As part of its launch, NearVerse is announcing partnerships with music distribution companies The Orchard, IODA and Monalis 360. The model extends to promotional movie clips, which is why NearVerse is also partnering with Magnolia Pictures.

Beyond making money from music purchases, Bogatin said he sees LoKast as a platform for sharing content in other apps, though he didn’t offer many details. He added that LoKast will be adding app-sharing soon, which also provides revenue opportunities.

One of the big challenges with this kind of media-sharing app is speed. If it takes minutes to download a song or contact information, no one’s going to use it. But when the NearVerse team gave me a demo at South by Southwest (where there are lots of iPhone users competing for network bandwidth), the app seemed very responsive, with updates reflected immediately between phones and most (not all) downloads taking only seconds. You can download LoKast from the App Store here.

NearVerse has raised venture funding, but it hasn’t announced the details yet.

Tags: LoKast

Companies: NearVerse

People: Boris Bogatin

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TAG Heuer’s Tesla Roadster gets pictured on the road

The good people of Tesla couldn’t leave us with just stock studio photography of their new TAG Heuer special edition vehicle, oh no. They’ve treated us to a full gallery of the car out on the road, sporting its new regalia and that radical paintjob with pride. To remind you, the only special thing about this edition is indeed that TAG Heuer has reskinned its exterior, while a center console mount for a Meridiist phone and room for a Limited Edition Stopwatch can be classified as product placements for the crowd who’d buy things just because there’s an allotted space for them. Anyhow, a couple more pictures await after the break (sans that silly flare on the Tesla logo above) or you can hit the source for the full experience.

Continue reading TAG Heuer’s Tesla Roadster gets pictured on the road

TAG Heuer’s Tesla Roadster gets pictured on the road originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pew: readers prefer ad-supported news to pay walls

Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.”

First things first: Pew notes that last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002. Numbers from eMarketer said that revenues fell by a total of $1 billion between 2008 and 2009. Still, a full 81 percent of Internet surfers say they’re cool with online ads if it means the content remains free, although “much of that is because they find them easy to ignore.”

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Plastic Logic QUE proReader pre-orders halted?

We’re not going to engage in too much wild speculation on this piece of information, but there are certainly a few raised eyebrows in Engadget-land right now. Apparently Plastic Logic is no longer offering pre-orders of its QUE proReader, as a tipster of ours discovered while trying to push through his order of the $799.99, 8GB / 3G version of the large-screen device. According to the order page “Pre-orders are sold out. QUE will be available online and in select Barnes & Noble stores this summer.” This of course comes on the heels of news that the company would be further delaying the ship date from mid-April to summer related to “fine-tuning” and “enhancing the overall product experience.” So our minds aren’t exactly at ease, as we’re trying to understand why a company wouldn’t just caveat pre-orders by letting people know there’s been a run on supply — though it’s possible that Plastic Logic is doing separate batches for mail order and in-store, and just needs to pace themselves. We’ve reached out to the company for comment, and we’ll let you know as soon as we hear back.

[Thanks, Clive]

Plastic Logic QUE proReader pre-orders halted? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Use DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac

Filed under: MobileMe

Many folks were excited when Apple announced Back to My Mac as part of MobileMe. Being able to remotely access your Mac from anywhere sounded like magic. We’re used to products from Apple that “just work” but for most people most of the time, Back to My Mac “just doesn’t.”

To maximize your chances, you’re supposed to use a supported router, but even that’s no guarantee. At home I have an Airport Extreme Base Station (Wireless-N), and at the office I have an Airport Extreme Dual-Band model. I don’t think it’s possible to get a “more compliant” setup, yet I still can’t get it to work most of the time.

Under the adage “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I took a chance and signed up for a free account with DynDNS. DynDNS gives you a free hostname which will go to your computer even when your IP address changes. There are scads of DynDNS domain names available, but for the purposes of this example, let’s assume that your domain name is imac.homeip.net.

After you’ve signed up for your free account and chosen a hostname, download and install the DynDNS Updater for Mac and install it on the machine you want to access via Back to My Mac. (If you want to do this for more than one computer, you will need a different DynDNS hostname for each computer. You can get up to five at no cost.)

Once you have it running, make sure that it has updated, and then switch to your other Mac. You could launch Screen Sharing.app directly from /System/Library/CoreServices, but a much better suggestion is to install the free ScreenSharingMenulet which will sit in your menu bar. ScreenSharingMenulet will remember hosts that you have previously connected to, meaning that you don’t have to re-type the hostnames. Click on the menu bar icon, select “New Connection…” and then enter your DynDNS hostname (i.e. imac.homeip.net) and check the “Add to My Computers” box so it will appear in the My Computers sub-menu in the future. Click “Connect” and cross your fingers.

If it still doesn’t work, I have a few more suggestions, but I warn you, we’re going to get a little technical here. First, you’re going to want to setup a DHCP Reservation for the computer you are trying to connect to. The process isn’t very difficult. Essentially what you are doing is telling the router to always assign the same IP address to the computer you are trying to access. After you have done that, tell the router to send all traffic directly to that computer. On the Airport Express this is called the “Default Host” and is found on the Internet Tab under “NAT” but other routers have different names for it (I believe Linksys routers refer to this as the “DMZ” host. Check your router’s documentation if you’re not sure.)

Warning: once you do this you are bypassing your router’s firewall. Mac OS X has a firewall, but it is not enabled by default. Launch System Preferences and click on the Security panel followed by Firewall tab. If it doesn’t say “Firewall: On” be sure to enable it.

If all else fails, you might want to try another direction: Back to My Mac through iChat. I haven’t actually tried that, but it’s another option.

I can’t explain why using a DynDNS domain name works more reliably than the built-in Bonjour sharing/connecting method, but after days of unsuccessfully trying to connect to my work computer, I have been able to connect via DynDNS without fail. As my Dad taught me long ago, “A good strategy is that which works.”

TUAWUse DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Begins Rebranding Campaign With “Let’s Do Amazing” Ads

Most people in the world hear Hewlett-Packard and think “printers.” And who can blame them? Since the relatively recent emphasis on the “HP” instead of “Hewlett-Packard,” and the general consumer move away from printers, HP hasn’t really done anything noteworthy — well, other than thrive despite the decline of the business in which they made their fortune. It’s like the old joke about the bricklayer and the sheep — but instead of drowning their sorrows in gin, HP is drowning them in money in an effort to rebrand the company. To that end, they’ve created a series of ads with the questionable tagline “Let’s Do Amazing.”

It’s not much of a time investment: a few 30-second spots with Flight of the Conchords‘ Rhys Darby bumbling around some professionals who appreciate what HP does. Won’t you join me for a look?

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iDongle hardware iPhone jailbreak tool makes hacker life a little simpler

If you needed any more proof that Apple’s lame cat-and-mouse game with the iPhone jailbreak community has only served to increase the scene’s resourcefulness and creativity, look no further than the iDongle, a slick piece of hacker-made hardware that can jailbreak and activate an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch running OS 3.1.2 just by plugging it into the dock connector. What’s more, it allows a jailbroken iPhone to be rebooted away from a computer, which is currently a problem for on-the-go hackers — just stick this guy in your bag and you’ll be good to go. There’s only a dozen prototypes right now, but pre-orders are being accepted to raise funds for production — we’ve got a feeling quite a few people are going to be interested. Video after the break.

Continue reading iDongle hardware iPhone jailbreak tool makes hacker life a little simpler

iDongle hardware iPhone jailbreak tool makes hacker life a little simpler originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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