Category: News

Apple announced, today, that the iPhone will have eight hours of talk time. This talk time is 60% higher than the 5 hour talk time Steve Jobs announced in January. Wow.

Additionally, the surface of the iPhone has been upgraded to “optical-quality glass” to protect it from scratches. This addresses a major concern consumers noted when it was announced that the navigation required a touch interface, and dispels any notions that the iPhone will scratch as the Nano did.

Lastly, Apple has continued to exclude mention of a two year contract in its prices, raising suspicions that a two year contract is no longer required. When the iPhone was initially announced, it was a common complaint that a two year contract with Satan AT&T made the iPhone less desirable. However, none of Apple’s commercials or press releases since then have mentioned a two year contract, despite detailing the phone prices.

Along with the eight hours of talk time, a few other aspects got a notable upgrade:

• 250 hours of standby time (over 10 days)
• 6 hours of Internet use
• 7 hours of video playback (two full movies)
• 24 hours of audio playback

In this latest update, Apple has squashed some of the biggest hurdles the iPhone was facing. While the AT&T aspect is still in the air, it is good to see Apple doing whatever in their power to improve their most important product in the coming decade.

Facebook introduced a new video section of their site recently (found at http://www.facebook.com/video/). As with all things Facebook, the section contains an extremely simple interface — a little too simple (more on that later). The whole thing smells like it was rushed. Overall, the Facebook Video section brings a few positive things to the table, and just plain sucks overall.

When you hit the site, it asks you to add the application to your profile. As with all new features, this is an “application.” After you add it, you are able to view videos. Immediately, a few things stand out:

• Videos can be tagged with your friends, and you can search for videos tagged of you.
• Video browsing emphasizes friends. Videos by strangers are nowhere to be found. Odd.
• There is no video search (perhaps it will be part of the main search later)
• Videos can be browsed by “latest”, “of you” and “tagged by friends.” That’s it. No other sort or filter options are available.

Once the application is installed, you are able to upload videos. Some (of the only good) highlights emerge:

• Videos can be uploaded from your phone (cool!)
• Videos can be directly recorded from the site (see picture below)
• Video max length: 10 minutes.

That’s about the only good things I have to say about Facebook Videos. The video player has a few standard Facebook features such as its own wall, a list of people who are tagged in the video, its length, and a pause button. But this is where it got ugly. Where do I begin? Study the screen shot below.

• Their player is missing volume controls!
• Where is the mute!! (I need to mention volume twice because that’s just stupid)
• There is no embed link (not going viral, I see)
• No full screen mode
• No rating system
• No favorites or book marking
• No view counts
• No tags or categories
• No related videos (this is stupid)

I waited until the end of the video to see if I was presented with related videos. Instead, I got this:

When I clicked on Next Video, it took me to the next video made by that author. Complete rubbish! Worse, when you play all of an author’s videos, you only get a Play Again button! This is worse than YouTube’s first iteration.

The problem here is that Facebook is treating videos like photos. But videos are different from photos in that they require a greater investment of time, creating a desire to only view the “good stuff.” The lack of tags, categories, ratings, and favorites means browsing for quality videos becomes next to impossible; in fact, it is likely that quality gets drowned out in crappy-video noise.

Facebook Video sucks. Facebook is definitely catering to the home-made audience with its video site by integrating people-tagging, but its misunderstanding of what makes a good video site will be Facebook Video’s downfall. While they have undoubtedly made uploading a straight forward process, browsing videos is an unenjoyable and often painful experience.

I think this is all part of an elaborate (and stupidly executed) plan to get a higher bid offer from Yahoo. In fact, the pair were back in the headlines after rumors broke of buyout talks being renewed. A successful entry into the video market might push Facebook to a $2 billion price (that’s how much they want), since YouTube went for $1.6 billion. But with garbage like this, gaining market share is complete fiction.

Without serious enhancements – and soon – this video site will languish in obscurity as people realize it’s a piece of garbage. Just doing the research to write this article made me want to tear my eyes out and mute the speakers.

No, seriously.

Over the weekend, it became official that the release date for the iPhone is June 29th.

As others have begun to wonder, is there too much hype for the iPhone? Consumers are amazingly critical of gadgets that have an explicit utilitarian value. If the iPhone does wrong any one of the half dozen things users expect on their cell phone, it could fail to meet expectations. With over a million inquiries about the iPhone, and it barely being publicized off of the Internet (until this weekend), that alone is rather amazing. Some of its most likely buyers are people who are not computer savvy, but those that are simply – uh – rich.

Of course, if anybody has been paying attention during water-cooler talks, it’s clear that the first wave of buyers are trend setters and those in the social elite. Just as with the iPod, the iPhone is all about style and status. I honestly don’t think the first wave of buyers will care about the phone’s capabilities, so long as it’s good enough; they are happy with the overwhelming attention they’ll receive at every single social gathering for the next three months.

Is there such a thing as having too much hype over the next big fashion item? I don’t think status symbols works like that. We’ll find out on June 29th.

On a personal note: no, I won’t be getting one of these. My company provides me with a Blackberry, and those run on T-Mobile (which is not AT&T).

Some of you may recall the huge scandal over at Digg a few weeks ago. Well, history nearly repeated itself today when a story on the same topic broke today: hackers cracked a new AACS processing key (used to encrypt DRM). One can only assume the people behind AACS became angry and sent cease and desist orders to Digg.

Nevertheless, the story hit the front page of Digg and people were anxiously watching what would happen. Last time, Kevin Rose (founder of Digg) publicly declared Digg would no longer bow to external forces on censoring that topic. Well, the story disappeared from the front page without explanation despite having a large number of Diggs.

People noticed.

Users began talking about spamming the site about the news again, and duplicate stories were submitted for a short period of time. Searching for the processing key yielded no results, and people were getting a little upset. But in a surprising turn of events (and possibly the first time in Digg’s history), the story re-appeared on the front page within minutes.

Perhaps Digg management are evaluating the C&D letter and realizing that they have no merit (i.e., you can’t claim copyright on a number?). If I had to guess, an admin censored the post upon seeing a C&D letter, only to be corrected by someone higher up in management that realized that wasn’t a good idea. Either way, it seems Digg learned its lesson.

Microsoft announced a new product today: Surface. The concept is simple: a giant touch screen that can accept input from multiple fingers as well as regular objects. This product has real potential for Microsoft’s future.

What’s interesting is that this is essentially a new operating system. Gone is the Start Bar, Outlook, MSN messenger, IE, and other familiar Windows components. It doesn’t even matter if it is running Windows or Linux because software for Surface is clearly unique to it alone. Granted, Surface may use Windows, but their approach makes them resemble Apple. Microsoft just developed a stealth OS built specifically on hardware they designed — by going the integrated route, Microsoft just pulled an Apple.

It starts off tame: managing photos and videos through a drag and drop interface. Rotating, scaling, and emailing the photos with one finger. Then they show you how browsing music and building a play list is easier than ever. Yawn. But keep reading.

It gets real interesting when they place a Zune on it and start dragging music into it. They put a camera on it and all of the pictures “fall out” for managing. Brushes are used to draw. Files are dragged and copied from one camera to another.

It takes a bolder step when they show it recognizes phones placed on it, allowing for instant price comparisons. Any product with an RFID tag could probably use this interface. Displaying additional information such as videos and reviews would be a natural next step. 

Suddenly this product has a real benefit to retailers nationwide – the ability to use dynamic media to convert curiosity into a sale.

They continue with demos showing a man use Live Maps to chart out a day plan and then drag it into a cell phone. They show how restaurants might use it to let people digitally order. They even thought of splitting a bill using multiple credit cards by simply dragging items to your card.

It has uses in education, entertainment, retail, dining, and the home. In short, its a new personal computer with an interface that makes sense to people of all ages. Anywhere a computer is used now, this has the potential to replace it.

Most of the time, when Microsoft releases new products, I think to myself that they are just marketing something old in a new way. But Surface is different. Granted, the technology behind it is not new, but the “stuff on the table” idea (probably patented like crazy) makes this technology good to great.

The product is due out in Winter 2007. If they do this right, it could be their next “big thing.”