*michael parekh on IT*

ON A COOL KINDLE FEATURE

ONE SMALL STEP

I've been an avid user and fan of Amazon's Kindle book reader since the original launch, having now bought and read hundreds of books on the Kindle and the excellent Kindle for iPhone (free) software App. 
One of the big differences between reading a book on the Kindle (either generation) and the iPhone App has been the ability to highlight the content of the book and write notes in the margin as it were (can't do all that on the Kindle App...yet).
But once the notes are in the Kindle, attached to a specific book, they're kind of trapped in there.  The opportunity around making this stuff available on the web is of course a no-brainer.  Today Amazon took a baby step in this regard, as this TechCrunch piece explains:

"Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.

While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser.

All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing?

Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)?

Amazon needs to connect the Kindle to the rest of the Web.  Hopefully, this is the first step in that direction."

Couldn't agree more.  Hope Amazon's listening.

ON DOWNSIDES OF UNLIMITED TEXTING

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

I'm always amazed at the way a young person these days seems to be able to text away at seemingly amazing speeds on the numerical keypad of an otherwise ordinary cell-phone.  And come away thinking how cool it is that they've been able to learn to do that, much as I had to learn how to type on a QWERTY keyboard at their age. 

But this cautionary piece in the New York Times about the potential downside of unlimited texting by teenagers especially, raises some other aspects of this phenomenon.  First the context:

"Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation."

All this may be too early to blame just on texting, as the piece goes on to emphasize,

"The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop."

Another thing for teenagers to learn to do in moderation, as if the list wasn't already long enough.

ON SOME WIRELESS INNOVATION

STRETCHING COMFORT ZONES

Looks like the U.S. wireless carriers are finally trying to innovate a bit on the wireless broadband front, judging from the latest from David Pogue.  Well, at least one of them is, as the review goes on to explain:

"...imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?

Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot.

The MiFi gets its Internet signal the same way those cellular modems do — in this case, from Verizon’s excellent 3G (high-speed) cellular data network. If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don’t travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270.

In essence, the MiFi converts that cellular Internet signal into an umbrella of Wi-Fi coverage that up to five people can share."

The thing to note here is that this is really far less about technology, than Verizon's decision to tinker with it's existing business model for wireless broadband and offer something that may at the margin compete with some of it's own lucrative offerings in the space.  Indeed, not too long ago Verizon specifically frowned at sharing one of their wireless broadband data modems, as the piece goes on to note:

"Sharing a cellular-modem account was something it strenuously discouraged only two years ago."

Hopefully we'll see more of this kind of thing from the wireless carriers going forward.  Fingers crossed.

ON MORE NETWORKS FOR iPHONE

MORE THE MERRIER

Looks like we may have more than one choice of carrier when it comes to an iPhone from Apple.  Some background in this USA Today piece:

"Verizon (VZ) and Apple (AAPL) are discussing the possible development of an iPhone for Verizon, with the goal of introducing it next year, people familiar with the situation say.

It would mark the first time Apple has produced a version of the iPhone for a CDMA wireless network, which is different from AT&T's GSM technology. Vodafone, co-owner of Verizon Wireless, already sells the iPhone in Europe..."

"...AT&T (T) has exclusive U.S. distribution rights to the iPhone into 2010, though specifics aren't known. The deal was struck in 2006, when the iPhone was still on the drawing board. Many telecom analysts expect AT&T to try to persuade Apple to extend the contract for another year, at least."

Why would a Verizon iPhone be a big deal?  The article goes on to explain:

"Should Verizon succeed, it would be a big loss for AT&T, says Roger Entner, head of telecom research for Nielsen. "Breaking the (iPhone) exclusivity with AT&T is a huge thing," he says. "That would send shivers into AT&T's stock and senior leadership."

The power of the iPhone was on full display last week, when AT&T reported stellar wireless results. AT&T signed up 1.6 million iPhone customers during the quarter — 40% of them new to AT&T. Revenue from mobile data was up almost 40%. Verizon reports results today.

By linking arms with Verizon, Entner says, Apple would gain access to its 80 million customers. While a few may already have an iPhone (some people have more than one carrier), the bulk don't."

The iPhone is well on it's way to being a mobile computing platform for thousands of third-party applications (aka "Apps").  Just this week, Apple passed a billion Apps downloaded milestone.  Making the iPhone available available on more than one carrier is almost a no-brainer for Apple.

ON OUR STATE OF WIRELESS

BUMPY ROAD

The iPhone over the last couple of years has accelerated the trend towards Smartphones by mainstream wireless users in the U.S., both through it's innovation and the intense competitive response by other manufacturers to introduce smartphones with iPhone like features.  The bad news though, as this New York Times article explains, is that the nation's patchwork of voice and data wireless networks, be they 2G, 3G or something else, are still striving to keep up with this trend:

"Oh, the things modern mobile phones can do. They are music-playing, video-taking, direction-providing multimedia powerhouses. But many people have trouble getting them to perform their most basic functions, like making phone calls.

The underlying problem, industry analysts say, is the complex quilt of the nation’s wireless networks. The major mobile carriers have spent tens of billions of dollars on new voice and data networks that they advertise as superfast wireless express lanes. But analysts say these upgrades present major engineering challenges, and the networks often underperform.

The resulting technological glitches have given many owners of fancy new phones the urge to throw them out the window and onto the highway.

For many, the iPhone has become a symbol of the gap between the promise of a powerful device and the reality of inconsistent service. Its owners complain of continual hiccups, particularly in certain cities..."
"...The reasons for the trouble are complicated. Part of the problem is that the companies are constantly upgrading their networks — creating a patchwork of technology on cell towers, and integrating slices of radio spectrum that carry voice and data transmissions.

Analysts said the problem was not unique to AT&T, but was especially pronounced on its network in some cities because of the way its infrastructure was built."

The article then goes on to detail the many geeky ways this state of affairs contributes to many problems for users.

While most of these issues will be sorted out in due time, it's still occasionally worth pondering about the potholes on the wireless highway today.

ON A MUST-HAVE iPHONE APP

THRILLING READ

The single best third-party App on the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) showed up today, at least in the view of this avowed book geek.  As a long-time fan and user of Amazon's Kindle (and now Kindle 2), and now an eager user of the new free Kindle iPhone app from Amazon, I heartily recommend people try this new App out, whether they own a Kindle or not. 
Walter Mossberg describes all of this well in detail in this review today:

"As I predicted in my review of Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 e-book reader last week, the giant bookseller has moved quickly to make the 240,000 book Kindle catalog available on other devices. On Tuesday night, the first Kindle software reader appeared, and it’s a free iPhone app.
Called Kindle for iPhone, the app replicates the basic book-reading functions of the hardware Kindle device, and can be thought of as a complement to that device, which has more features. However, you don’t have to own a hardware Kindle to use this app. You can now choose instead to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as the reader for books from Kindle’s catalog."

He goes on to add:

"...it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon’s servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just as my hardware Kindle does.
It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone."

CNET has another review of the software worth reading with some additional details.

I'd add that Kindle books, at least for now, are generally less expensive to buy than their physical counterparts, partly due to Amazon subsidizing many titles.  Most of them are available for $9.99, with many paperbacks available for far less.
In addition, since the iPhone is generally with me at all times, it's very convenient for a quick access to any book in my library I'd like to peruse at will.
With free samples of many books available for download on to an iPhone/iTouch, I'd recommend giving the free Kindle App a try.

ON THE NETBOOK REVOLUTION

THEY'RE HERE...

Wired magazine has a piece worth reading on how Netbooks became a force for incumbent PC and laptop vendors to reckon with over the last couple of years.  As the article explains it, Asustek, a Taiwanese company that's the world's 7th largest notebook maker, was just trying to create an inexpensive laptop for the Chinese market:

"When Asustek launched the Eee PC in fall 2007, it sold out the entire 350,000-unit inventory in a few months. Eee PCs weren't bought by people in poor countries but by middle-class consumers in western Europe and the US, people who wanted a second laptop to carry in a handbag for peeking at YouTube or Facebook wherever they were.

Soon the major PC brands—Dell, HP, Lenovo—were scrambling to catch up; by fall 2008, nearly every US computermaker had rushed a teensy $400 netbook to market..."

"...By the end of 2008, Asustek had sold 5 million netbooks, and other brands together had sold 10 million. (Europe in particular has gone mad for netbooks; sales there are eight times higher than in the US.) In a single year, netbooks had become 7 percent of the world's entire laptop market. Next year it will be 12 percent."

It's not the hardware vendors that are seeing their business models shaken and stirred, but also software giants like Microsoft, as ChannelWeb goes on to elaborate:

"All of this has come on the heels of some fairly disappointing product introductions for Microsoft.

Following the widespread non-adoption of its Windows Vista operating system in commercial settings, Microsoft couldn't have been pleased to see Linux-based netbooks like the Eee PC from Asus start to really take off. So the company did move relatively quickly to get Windows XP onto newer versions of the Eee PC and other netbooks.

The problem -- Windows XP Home for netbooks brings Microsoft only $32 per license from local OEMs, compared to $65 for the desktop version of Windows XP Home. And Microsoft is in a tricky position, because if it tries to charge too much for XP or for its upcoming Windows 7 SKU for netbooks, customers may opt for Ubuntu Linux configurations already available from many netbook manufacturers."

Indeed, Microsoft is going as far to restrict netbook vendors from shipping systems with more than 1GB of RAM in order to protect it's licensing model on regular laptops. 

Given that Vista doesn't run well at all on netbooks, and XP is on it's way out, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to get Windows 7 out the door by as early as April this year.  The company has tried to make sure Windows 7 plays well on netbooks.

Both articles are well worth reading in full.

ON OFFLINE GMAIL

FINALLY
As a long time user of Google's Gmail, I was glad to see the company rolling out "Offline Gmail", even in a 0.1 beta stage.  This VentureBeat post gives some more background:

"In a huge move, Google is rolling out offline support for Gmail users, which means you’ll finally be able to read and write email even when you’re not connected to the web.

Jeez, I’ve been waiting a while for this one. And so have many others.

Even though Gmail adoption has been strong to date, it’s had to play catch up to other popular online-only email services like Hotmail and AOL. In part, it’s growth has been hampered by its inability to work offline.

This move essentially takes the shackles off Gmail, giving it the flexibility to match Microsoft’s flagship email service, Outlook — which lets millions of office workers and consumers check their email both online and offline. The big difference: Gmail is free. This is actually a major attack on Microsoft, because it wipes away one of the biggest technical deficiencies remaining in Gmail.

Yahoo Mail, meanwhile, is the world’s leading online email service. Gmail is just a fraction the size of Yahoo Mail, but this move could give people more incentive to switch.

A company spokesperson says users of Google’s business software package Google Apps will also be able to view their Calendar offline sometime in “the next couple of weeks.”

Google also has a short video clip how Offline Gmail should work:

Kudos to Google for finally rolling this out.  Looking forward to trying out Offline Gmail/Calendar and seeing them both mature.  Also hope Google gets around to adding this feature to Google Docs as well.

ON A NEW WAY TO GO WIRELESS

CLOSE AND PERSONAL

Like many geeks, I've been waiting for a new wireless data transfer standard called Transfer Jet to finally get close to being available to consumers.  

David Pogue of the New York Times explains how we may be close to finally seeing this technology deployed later this year, with  this review  of an understated, but cool technology:

"At the Toshiba booth at the Consumer Electronics Show a couple weeks ago, a rep showed me a new technology called Transfer Jet. 

I sure hadn’t heard of it, but apparently it’s an upcoming industry standard. Toshiba, Sony, Canon, Casio, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus, Samsung, JVC and others make up the engineering committee working on it.
It’s yet another wireless technology, like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but it requires even less power and has even a shorter range—along the lines of one inch.
Yes, I know: an inch? What good is wireless with a range that small?
Once you see the demo, you’ll get it. You bring a camera over to your computer and touch them together—and a whole memory card’s worth of photos are transferred in a few seconds. No wires, software, password, pairing, none of that. Just touch ‘em..."
"...Since Transfer Jet is extremely fast (375 megabits per second), you could also offload videos from your camera or camcorder this way, too. You could also, presumably, touch your cameraphone to a drugstore kiosk to print the pictures on it; touch cellphones to transfer music; and so on."

This short demo by a Toshiba representative at the 2008 CES a few weeks ago shows how cool this could really be.

Of course it'll be a while before the technology is widely available in a wide range of devices across so many vendors, but then it didn't seem to take technologies like Bluetooth and Wifi to take that long to become so ubiquitous and indispensable.  Here's hoping the same goes for Transfer Jet.

ON MY FAVORITE iPHONE GAME

TOTAL HIT

Like so many iPhone geeks, I'd been waiting for this long-anticipated game to be released and it doesn't disappoint.  IGN has a review that puts it in context and explains:

"A few years ago, an oft-asked question at mobile games conferences was, "Where is mobile's Mario?"

It was essentially shorthand for the eternal search for the killer app, the game that brings serious heat to the platform that hosts it. For the NES, that was Super Mario Bros.

For the Genesis, it was Sonic the Hedgehog. Xbox had Halo. Unfortunately, mobile never really had a killer app; the closest it got was Tetris or Bejeweled, both perennial bestsellers. If the iPhone even needs a killer app is open to debate -- after all, the platform needs little help getting attention. But now it has one now, whether it wants it or not.

Rolando, developed by Hand Circus and published by ngmoco, is a brilliant puzzle-adventure game, loaded with fab personality. You must save the pop-up book Rolandoland from an invasion of nasty little shadow creatures by using your benevolent powers as the deity-like Finger. (That's what the little roly-poly Rolandos refer to you as.)

You can manipulate objects in the world, such as twisting windmills or releasing bombs from little storage boxes. But the main action is tilting. Since the Rolandos are little balls, you tilt your iPhone from side to side, rolling your friends ever closer to the exit inside each obstacle-filled stage. Each stage has a required number of Rolandos that must escape if you want to unlock the next stage."

This YouTube review of Rolando provides a glimpse of the game in action.

At $9.99 a copy, the App is not inexpensive in the universe of iPhone games.  The game has immense amount of replay value, and comes with a music soundtrack that I'd buy separately if available.  Available only on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, it's a game I'd highly recommend.