January 1, 2010
By DAVID CARR
I can remember when I first thought seriously about Twitter. Last March, I was at the SXSW conference, a conclave in Austin, Tex., where technology, media and music are mashed up and re-imagined, and, not so coincidentally, where Twitter first rolled out in 2007. As someone who was oversubscribed on Facebook, overwhelmed by the computer-generated RSS feeds of news that came flying at me, and swamped by incoming e-mail messages, the last thing I wanted was one more Web-borne intrusion into my life.
And then there was the name. Twitter.
In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, “to tweet” is even more embarrassing.
Beyond the dippy lingo, the idea that something intelligent, something worthy of mindshare, might occur in the space of 140 characters — Twitter’s parameters were set by what would fit in a text message on a phone — seems unlikely.
But it was clear that at the conference, the primary news platform was Twitter, with real-time annotation of the panels on stage and critical updates about what was happening elsewhere at a very hectic convention. At 52, I succumbed, partly out of professional necessity.
And now, nearly a year later, has Twitter turned my brain to mush? No, I’m in narrative on more things in a given moment than I ever thought possible, and instead of spending a half-hour surfing in search of illumination, I get a sense of the day’s news and how people are reacting to it in the time that it takes to wait for coffee at Starbucks. Yes, I worry about my ability to think long thoughts — where was I, anyway? — but the tradeoff has been worth it.
Some time soon, the company won’t say when, the 100-millionth person will have signed on to Twitter to follow and be followed by friends and strangers. That may sound like a MySpace waiting to happen — remember MySpace? — but I’m convinced Twitter is here to stay.
And I’m not alone.
“The history of the Internet suggests that there have been cool Web sites that go in and out of fashion and then there have been open standards that become plumbing,” said Steven Johnson, the author and technology observer who wrote a seminal piece about Twitter for Time last June. “Twitter is looking more and more like plumbing, and plumbing is eternal.”
Really? What could anyone possibly find useful in this cacophony of short-burst communication?
Well, that depends on whom you ask, but more importantly whom you follow. On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.
The most frequent objection to Twitter is a predictable one: “I don’t need to know someone is eating a donut right now.” But if that someone is a serious user of Twitter, she or he might actually be eating the curmudgeon’s lunch, racing ahead with a clear, up-to-the-second picture of an increasingly connected, busy world. The service has obvious utility for a journalist, but no matter what business you are in, imagine knowing what the thought leaders in your industry were reading and considering. And beyond following specific individuals, Twitter hash tags allow you to go deep into interests and obsession: #rollerderby, #physics, #puppets and #Avatar, to name just a few of many thousands.
The act of publishing on Twitter is so friction-free — a few keystrokes and hit send — that you can forget that others are out there listening. I was on a Virgin America cross-country flight, and used its wireless connection to tweet about the fact that the guy next to me seemed to be the leader of a cult involving Axe body spray. A half-hour later, a steward approached me and said he wondered if I would be more comfortable with a seat in the bulkhead. (He turned out to be a great guy, but I was doing a story involving another part of the company, so I had to decline the offer. @VirginAmerica, its corporate Twitter account, sent me a message afterward saying perhaps it should develop a screening process for Axe. It was creepy and comforting all at once.)
Like many newbies on Twitter, I vastly overestimated the importance of broadcasting on Twitter and after a while, I realized that I was not Moses and neither Twitter nor its users were wondering what I thought. Nearly a year in, I’ve come to understand that the real value of the service is listening to a wired collective voice.
Not that long ago, I was at a conference at Yale and looked at the sea of open laptops in the seats in front of me. So why wasn’t my laptop open? Because I follow people on Twitter who serve as my Web-crawling proxies, each of them tweeting links that I could examine and read on a Blackberry. Regardless of where I am, I surf far less than I used to.
At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while. Much of what I need to know is in that cup: if it looks like Apple is going to demo its new tablet, or Amazon sold more Kindles than actual books at Christmas, or the final vote in the Senate gets locked in on health care, I almost always learn about it first on Twitter.
The expressive limits of a kind of narrative developed from text messages, with less space to digress or explain than this sentence, has significant upsides. The best people on Twitter communicate with economy and precision, with each element — links, hash tags and comments — freighted with meaning. Professional acquaintances whom I find insufferable on every other platform suddenly become interesting within the confines of Twitter.
Twitter is incredibly customizable, with little of the social expectations that go with Facebook. Depending on whom you follow, Twitter can reveal a nation riveted by the last episode of “Jersey Shore” or a short-form conclave of brilliance. There is plenty of nonsense — #Tiger had quite a run — but there are rich threads on the day’s news and bravura solo performances from learned autodidacts. And the ethos of Twitter, which is based on self-defining groups, is far more well-mannered than many parts of the Web — more Toastmasters than mosh pit. On Twitter, you are your avatar and your avatar is you, so best not to act like a lout and when people want to flame you for something you said, they are responding to their own followers, not yours, so trolls quickly lose interest.
“Anything that is useful to both dissidents in Iran and Martha Stewart has a lot going for it; Twitter has more raw capability for users than anything since e-mail,” said Clay Shirky, who wrote “Here Comes Everybody,” a book about social media. “It will be hard to wait out Twitter because it is lightweight, endlessly useful and gets better as more people use it. Brands are using it, institutions are using it, and it is becoming a place where a lot of important conversations are being held.”
Twitter helps define what is important by what Mr. Shirky has called “algorithmic authority,” meaning that if all kinds of people are pointing at the same thing at the same instant, it must be a pretty big deal.
Beyond the throbbing networked intelligence, there is the possibility of practical magic. Twitter can tell you what kind of netbook you should buy for your wife for Christmas — thanks Twitter! — or call you out when you complain about the long lines it took to buy it, as a tweeter on behalf of the electronics store B & H did when I shared the experience on my Blackberry while in line. I have found transcendent tacos at a car wash in San Antonio, rediscovered a brand of reporter’s notepad I adore, uncovered sources for stories, all just by typing a query into Twitter.
All those riches do not come at zero cost: If you think e-mail and surfing can make time disappear, wait until you get ahold of Twitter, or more likely, it gets ahold of you. There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on.
But in the right circumstance, Twitter can flex some big muscles. Think of last weekend, a heavy travel period marked by a terrorist incident on Friday. As news outlets were scrambling to understand the implications for travelers on Saturday morning, Twitter began lighting up with reports of new security initiatives, including one from @CharleneLi, a consultant who tweeted from the Montreal airport at about 7:30 a.m.: “New security rules for int’l flights into US. 1 bag, no electronics the ENTIRE flight, no getting up last hour of flight.”
It was far from the whole story and getting ahead of the news by some hours would seem like no big deal, but imagine you or someone you loved was flying later that same day: Twitter might seem very useful.
Twitter’s growing informational hegemony is not assured. There have been serious outages in recent weeks, leading many business and government users to wonder about the stability of the platform. And this being the Web, many smart folks are plotting ways to turn Twitter into so much pixilated mist. But I don’t think so. I can go anywhere I want on the Web, but there is no guarantee that my Twitter gang will come with me. I may have quite a few followers, but that doesn’t make me Moses.
Showing posts with label Software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Software. Show all posts
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Friday, August 07, 2009
Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession By Ashlee Vance
August 7, 2009, 6:50 pm
Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession By Ashlee Vance
Hang around at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters for five or ten minutes and someone dressed in khaki pants and a blue shirt is bound to tell you about the wonders of SharePoint — one of the company’s most successful and increasingly controversial lines of software.
Think of SharePoint as the jack-of-all-trades in the business software realm. Companies use it to create Web sites and then manage content for those sites. It can help workers collaborate on projects and documents. And it has a variety of corporate search and business intelligence tools too.
Microsoft wraps all of this software up into a package and sells the bundle at a reasonable price. In fact, the total cost of the bundle often comes in below what specialist companies would charge for a single application in, say, the business intelligence or corporate search fields.
It can’t do everything. Executives at Microsoft will readily admit that the bits and pieces of SharePoint lack the more sophisticated features found in products from specialist software makers.
“We don’t claim we do everything,” said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft. “If we do 50 percent of the functions that these other companies do, but they’re the ones customers really want, that’s fine. The magic is that end users actually like to use the software.”
This strategy seems to have worked even during the recession.
While Microsoft’s Windows sales fell for the first time in history this year, its SharePoint sales have gone up. Microsoft declines to break out the exact sales figures for the software but said that SharePoint broke the $1 billion revenue mark last year and continued to rise past that total this year, making it the hottest selling server-side product ever for the company.
Companies like Ferrari, Starbucks and Viacom have used SharePoint to create their public-facing Web sites and for various other tasks. All told, more than 17,000 customers use Sharepoint.
In many ways, SharePoint mimics the strategy Microsoft took with Office by linking together numerous applications into a single unit. This approach appeals to customers looking to save money and also represents a real threat to a variety of business software makers.
Many of these specialists like Cognos, a business intelligence software maker, and Documentum, a content management software maker, have been gobbled up by larger players looking to create their own suites. I.B.M., for example, bought Cognos, while EMC bought Documentum. Other companies like Autonomy, a maker of top-of-the-line corporate search software, remain independent.
Crucially, Microsoft has found a way to create ties between SharePoint and its more traditional products like Office and Exchange. Companies can tweak Office documents through SharePoint and receive information like whether a worker is online or not through tools in Exchange. These links have Microsoft carrying along its old-line software as it builds a more Internet-focused software line.
“SharePoint is saving Microsoft’s Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in,” said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. “It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping.”
Along these lines, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has talked about SharePoint as the company’s next big operating system.
Microsoft has managed to undercut even the panoply of open-source companies playing in the business software market by giving away a free basic license to SharePoint if they already have Windows Server. “It’s a brilliant strategy that mimics open source in its viral, free distribution, but transcends open source in its ability to lock customers into a complete, not-free-at-all Microsoft stack - one for which they’ll pay more and more the deeper they get into SharePoint,” Mr. Asay said.
A number of smaller software companies have been eager to piggyback on SharePoint’s success. Based in San Diego, Sharepoint360 provides consulting services and software development help around the product. The company started after employees at a construction company built some Sharepoint applications and decided to market the software to other construction firms.
The start-up has helped construction companies create systems for managing projects, allowing various people to check-in on the progress of a building and keep track of documents tied to the site. It has also expanded beyond the construction area doing work for NASA, Nestle and Toshiba, according to Paul West, a co-founder of SharePoint360.
The company offers to host SharePoint applications for customers. Microsoft too wants to host more software for companies as it moves toward the cloud computing model.
Mr. West recognizes that Microsoft may begin stepping on its partners’ toes. “It may certainly come to pass that they pull the switch,” he said. “That would have implications for us.”
In the meantime, however, Microsoft subsidizes training courses and consulting work for companies like Sharepoint360.
Next year, Microsoft plans to release a new version of the software packed full of more advanced features, including stronger ties to the corporate search technology it acquired in the $1.2 billion purchase of Fast Search and Transfer, a Norwegian start-up.
Best Buy uses the Fast technology today to provide on-the-fly pricing information to customers performing product searches on its Web site.
By making these more sophisticated tools available to customers, Microsoft thinks it can keep pushing niche software makers out of the way and give business people, rather than just the tech folks, a way to work with business applications.
“We believe customers can turn off some of these point solutions,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, a general manager in Microsoft’s business software group. “With SharePoint, we can deliver a very, very approachable application to end users.”
Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession By Ashlee Vance
Hang around at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters for five or ten minutes and someone dressed in khaki pants and a blue shirt is bound to tell you about the wonders of SharePoint — one of the company’s most successful and increasingly controversial lines of software.
Think of SharePoint as the jack-of-all-trades in the business software realm. Companies use it to create Web sites and then manage content for those sites. It can help workers collaborate on projects and documents. And it has a variety of corporate search and business intelligence tools too.
Microsoft wraps all of this software up into a package and sells the bundle at a reasonable price. In fact, the total cost of the bundle often comes in below what specialist companies would charge for a single application in, say, the business intelligence or corporate search fields.
It can’t do everything. Executives at Microsoft will readily admit that the bits and pieces of SharePoint lack the more sophisticated features found in products from specialist software makers.
“We don’t claim we do everything,” said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft. “If we do 50 percent of the functions that these other companies do, but they’re the ones customers really want, that’s fine. The magic is that end users actually like to use the software.”
This strategy seems to have worked even during the recession.
While Microsoft’s Windows sales fell for the first time in history this year, its SharePoint sales have gone up. Microsoft declines to break out the exact sales figures for the software but said that SharePoint broke the $1 billion revenue mark last year and continued to rise past that total this year, making it the hottest selling server-side product ever for the company.
Companies like Ferrari, Starbucks and Viacom have used SharePoint to create their public-facing Web sites and for various other tasks. All told, more than 17,000 customers use Sharepoint.
In many ways, SharePoint mimics the strategy Microsoft took with Office by linking together numerous applications into a single unit. This approach appeals to customers looking to save money and also represents a real threat to a variety of business software makers.
Many of these specialists like Cognos, a business intelligence software maker, and Documentum, a content management software maker, have been gobbled up by larger players looking to create their own suites. I.B.M., for example, bought Cognos, while EMC bought Documentum. Other companies like Autonomy, a maker of top-of-the-line corporate search software, remain independent.
Crucially, Microsoft has found a way to create ties between SharePoint and its more traditional products like Office and Exchange. Companies can tweak Office documents through SharePoint and receive information like whether a worker is online or not through tools in Exchange. These links have Microsoft carrying along its old-line software as it builds a more Internet-focused software line.
“SharePoint is saving Microsoft’s Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in,” said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. “It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping.”
Along these lines, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has talked about SharePoint as the company’s next big operating system.
Microsoft has managed to undercut even the panoply of open-source companies playing in the business software market by giving away a free basic license to SharePoint if they already have Windows Server. “It’s a brilliant strategy that mimics open source in its viral, free distribution, but transcends open source in its ability to lock customers into a complete, not-free-at-all Microsoft stack - one for which they’ll pay more and more the deeper they get into SharePoint,” Mr. Asay said.
A number of smaller software companies have been eager to piggyback on SharePoint’s success. Based in San Diego, Sharepoint360 provides consulting services and software development help around the product. The company started after employees at a construction company built some Sharepoint applications and decided to market the software to other construction firms.
The start-up has helped construction companies create systems for managing projects, allowing various people to check-in on the progress of a building and keep track of documents tied to the site. It has also expanded beyond the construction area doing work for NASA, Nestle and Toshiba, according to Paul West, a co-founder of SharePoint360.
The company offers to host SharePoint applications for customers. Microsoft too wants to host more software for companies as it moves toward the cloud computing model.
Mr. West recognizes that Microsoft may begin stepping on its partners’ toes. “It may certainly come to pass that they pull the switch,” he said. “That would have implications for us.”
In the meantime, however, Microsoft subsidizes training courses and consulting work for companies like Sharepoint360.
Next year, Microsoft plans to release a new version of the software packed full of more advanced features, including stronger ties to the corporate search technology it acquired in the $1.2 billion purchase of Fast Search and Transfer, a Norwegian start-up.
Best Buy uses the Fast technology today to provide on-the-fly pricing information to customers performing product searches on its Web site.
By making these more sophisticated tools available to customers, Microsoft thinks it can keep pushing niche software makers out of the way and give business people, rather than just the tech folks, a way to work with business applications.
“We believe customers can turn off some of these point solutions,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, a general manager in Microsoft’s business software group. “With SharePoint, we can deliver a very, very approachable application to end users.”
Monday, July 20, 2009
Lost in the Cloud By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
July 20, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Lost in the Cloud By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
Cambridge, Mass.
EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend: Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand.
Many people consider this development to be as sensible and inevitable as the move from answering machines to voicemail. With your stuff in the cloud, it’s not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, any more than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision. In addition, as more and more of our information is gathered from and shared with others — through Facebook, MySpace or Twitter — having it all online can make a lot of sense.
The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.
Some are in plain view. If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you. For example, if your favorite music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service rather than freely in your custody as a compact disc or an MP3 file on your hard drive, you can lose your music if you fall behind on your payments — or if the vendor goes bankrupt or loses interest in the service. Last week Amazon apparently conveyed a publisher’s change-of-heart to owners of its Kindle e-book reader: some purchasers of Orwell’s “1984” found it removed from their devices, with nothing to show for their purchase other than a refund. (Orwell would be amused.)
Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law. A hacker recently guessed the password to the personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, and was thus able to extract the employee’s Google password. That in turn compromised a trove of Twitter’s corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud. Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud all you need is a password.
Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers — and not to tell you about it. There have been thousands of such requests lodged since the law was passed, and the F.B.I.’s own audits have shown that there can be plenty of overreach — perhaps wholly inadvertent — in requests like these.
The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it much easier for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The Chinese government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant messaging software to monitor text conversations and block undesirable words and phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes routinely monitor all Internet traffic — which, except for e-commerce and banking transactions, is rarely encrypted against prying eyes.
With a little effort and political will, we could solve these problems. Companies could be required under fair practices law to allow your data to be released back to you with just a click so that you can erase your digital footprints or simply take your business (and data) elsewhere. They could also be held to the promises they make about content sold through the cloud: If they sell you an e-book, they can’t take it back or make it less functional later. To increase security, companies that keep their data in the cloud could adopt safer Internet communications and password practices, including the use of biometrics like fingerprints to validate identity.
And some governments can be persuaded — or perhaps required by their independent judiciaries — to treat data entrusted to the cloud with the same level of privacy protection as data held personally. The Supreme Court declared in 1961 that a police search of a rented house for a whiskey still was a violation of the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the tenant, even though the landlord had given permission for the search. Information stored in the cloud deserves similar safeguards.
But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice orFirefox.
Promoting competition is only the tip of the iceberg — there are also the thousands of applications so novel that they don’t yet compete with anything. These tend to be produced by tinkerers and hackers. Instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and the Web itself all exist thanks to people out in left field, often writing for fun rather than money, who are able to tempt the rest of us to try out what they’ve done.
This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows: Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.
The market is churning through these issues. Amazon is offering a generic cloud-computing infrastructure so anyone can set up new software on a new Web site without gatekeeping by the likes of Facebook. Google’s Android platform is being used in a new generation of mobile phones with fewer restrictions on outside code. But the dynamics here are complicated. When we vest our activities and identities in one place in the cloud, it takes a lot of dissatisfaction for us to move. And many software developers who once would have been writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple.
If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents.
We’ve only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly into the cloud. That’s not a reason to turn around. But we must make sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly necessary later.
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard, is the author of “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.”
Op-Ed Contributor
Lost in the Cloud By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
Cambridge, Mass.
EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend: Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand.
Many people consider this development to be as sensible and inevitable as the move from answering machines to voicemail. With your stuff in the cloud, it’s not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, any more than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision. In addition, as more and more of our information is gathered from and shared with others — through Facebook, MySpace or Twitter — having it all online can make a lot of sense.
The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.
Some are in plain view. If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you. For example, if your favorite music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service rather than freely in your custody as a compact disc or an MP3 file on your hard drive, you can lose your music if you fall behind on your payments — or if the vendor goes bankrupt or loses interest in the service. Last week Amazon apparently conveyed a publisher’s change-of-heart to owners of its Kindle e-book reader: some purchasers of Orwell’s “1984” found it removed from their devices, with nothing to show for their purchase other than a refund. (Orwell would be amused.)
Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law. A hacker recently guessed the password to the personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, and was thus able to extract the employee’s Google password. That in turn compromised a trove of Twitter’s corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud. Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud all you need is a password.
Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers — and not to tell you about it. There have been thousands of such requests lodged since the law was passed, and the F.B.I.’s own audits have shown that there can be plenty of overreach — perhaps wholly inadvertent — in requests like these.
The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it much easier for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The Chinese government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant messaging software to monitor text conversations and block undesirable words and phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes routinely monitor all Internet traffic — which, except for e-commerce and banking transactions, is rarely encrypted against prying eyes.
With a little effort and political will, we could solve these problems. Companies could be required under fair practices law to allow your data to be released back to you with just a click so that you can erase your digital footprints or simply take your business (and data) elsewhere. They could also be held to the promises they make about content sold through the cloud: If they sell you an e-book, they can’t take it back or make it less functional later. To increase security, companies that keep their data in the cloud could adopt safer Internet communications and password practices, including the use of biometrics like fingerprints to validate identity.
And some governments can be persuaded — or perhaps required by their independent judiciaries — to treat data entrusted to the cloud with the same level of privacy protection as data held personally. The Supreme Court declared in 1961 that a police search of a rented house for a whiskey still was a violation of the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the tenant, even though the landlord had given permission for the search. Information stored in the cloud deserves similar safeguards.
But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice orFirefox.
Promoting competition is only the tip of the iceberg — there are also the thousands of applications so novel that they don’t yet compete with anything. These tend to be produced by tinkerers and hackers. Instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and the Web itself all exist thanks to people out in left field, often writing for fun rather than money, who are able to tempt the rest of us to try out what they’ve done.
This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows: Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.
The market is churning through these issues. Amazon is offering a generic cloud-computing infrastructure so anyone can set up new software on a new Web site without gatekeeping by the likes of Facebook. Google’s Android platform is being used in a new generation of mobile phones with fewer restrictions on outside code. But the dynamics here are complicated. When we vest our activities and identities in one place in the cloud, it takes a lot of dissatisfaction for us to move. And many software developers who once would have been writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple.
If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents.
We’ve only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly into the cloud. That’s not a reason to turn around. But we must make sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly necessary later.
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard, is the author of “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.”
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Free software programs turn smart phones into search engines By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
DallasNews.com
Comments 0 | Recommend 0
Email
Print
RSS
Yahoo! Buzz
AddThis
Social Bookmarking
Free software programs turn smart phones into search engines By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 14, 2008
asmith@dallasnews.com
Shoppers can save big money with free software programs that turn smart phones into search engines.
[Click image for a larger version] JENN ACKERMAN/DMN
JENN ACKERMAN/DMN
The SnapTell Explorer application retrieves product listings from the iPhone's camera.
The new programs compare prices in stores with prices online and, in many cases, with prices in nearby stores.
For some of these applications, you have to type in product names or bar codes. Others use cellphone cameras or voice recognition software to speed up the process. All you have to do is hold the camera up to a product to get a quick price comparison.
As the technology gets easier to use, it's spreading from hard-core tech geeks to mainstream smart phone users.
In fact, an application called ShopSavvy now comes standard on phones that use Google's Android operating system.
"People who have ShopSavvy on their phones use it, on average, several times a day," said Alexander Muse, co-founder of Big in Japan, the Dallas company that makes ShopSavvy.
Right now, ShopSavvy only works on Android, but it should soon be available for iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile handsets.
"We currently run about a million searches a day," Mr. Muse said, "but we expect that number to grow exponentially over the next year."
Users launch ShopSavvy by clicking on an icon and initiate a search by pointing the camera at a bar code.
The system can price nearly anything with a bar code: DVDs, video games, books, consumer electronics, kitchen appliances, groceries, anything.
Results, including prices from the Web and stores nearby, start arriving a couple of seconds after the scan.
How does ShopSavvy know which stores are nearby? It uses the GPS chip inside your phone to determine your location.
Big in Japan gets real-time inventory information from some big retailers, so ShopSavvy can often tell you how much a store charges for something and how many units are in stock.
When the program can't determine whether a product is in stock, it gives the store's phone number and offers to connect with a single click.
ShopSavvy has made a lot of headlines since it launched in September, but it's hardly the only price-comparison software.
Free programs from Amazon and SnapTell allow iPhone users to take pictures of entire products rather than bar codes.
Users who prefer to type can choose among a slew of programs that search online shopping sites for product names and bar codes.
One, Frucall, allows people with any type of cellphone to call a toll-free number, enter a bar code number and get a price quote.
If all that typing seems too hard, shoppers can use their voices to search.
Google just released a free iPhone application that allows you to speak queries rather than typing them. It's not specifically designed for bargain-hunting, but users who activate the program and speak a product name will get Google Shopping results.
People who prefer Yahoo Shopping can get that instead. Yahoo's Mobile Search program, which works on many types of phones, also has voice recognition.
What's more, a voice-recognition program called Vlingo gives iPhone users an easy way to access Yahoo search.
"Product search is one of the five most common things that people do with our mobile search," said Vlingo chief executive Dave Grannan.
"It only takes a couple seconds and – as anyone who has ever done price comparisons on the Web knows – it can save a lot of money."
The mobile shopping programs can make shopping for gifts much more efficient, but analysts say few shoppers will use them regularly this Christmas.
That may change as the programs get new features, such as the ability to instantly purchase products from the merchants that appear on the product searches.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-compare_14bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4a4dcdd.html
http://snipurl.com/83occ
Comments 0 | Recommend 0
RSS
Yahoo! Buzz
AddThis
Social Bookmarking
Free software programs turn smart phones into search engines By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 14, 2008
asmith@dallasnews.com
Shoppers can save big money with free software programs that turn smart phones into search engines.
[Click image for a larger version] JENN ACKERMAN/DMN
JENN ACKERMAN/DMN
The SnapTell Explorer application retrieves product listings from the iPhone's camera.
The new programs compare prices in stores with prices online and, in many cases, with prices in nearby stores.
For some of these applications, you have to type in product names or bar codes. Others use cellphone cameras or voice recognition software to speed up the process. All you have to do is hold the camera up to a product to get a quick price comparison.
As the technology gets easier to use, it's spreading from hard-core tech geeks to mainstream smart phone users.
In fact, an application called ShopSavvy now comes standard on phones that use Google's Android operating system.
"People who have ShopSavvy on their phones use it, on average, several times a day," said Alexander Muse, co-founder of Big in Japan, the Dallas company that makes ShopSavvy.
Right now, ShopSavvy only works on Android, but it should soon be available for iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile handsets.
"We currently run about a million searches a day," Mr. Muse said, "but we expect that number to grow exponentially over the next year."
Users launch ShopSavvy by clicking on an icon and initiate a search by pointing the camera at a bar code.
The system can price nearly anything with a bar code: DVDs, video games, books, consumer electronics, kitchen appliances, groceries, anything.
Results, including prices from the Web and stores nearby, start arriving a couple of seconds after the scan.
How does ShopSavvy know which stores are nearby? It uses the GPS chip inside your phone to determine your location.
Big in Japan gets real-time inventory information from some big retailers, so ShopSavvy can often tell you how much a store charges for something and how many units are in stock.
When the program can't determine whether a product is in stock, it gives the store's phone number and offers to connect with a single click.
ShopSavvy has made a lot of headlines since it launched in September, but it's hardly the only price-comparison software.
Free programs from Amazon and SnapTell allow iPhone users to take pictures of entire products rather than bar codes.
Users who prefer to type can choose among a slew of programs that search online shopping sites for product names and bar codes.
One, Frucall, allows people with any type of cellphone to call a toll-free number, enter a bar code number and get a price quote.
If all that typing seems too hard, shoppers can use their voices to search.
Google just released a free iPhone application that allows you to speak queries rather than typing them. It's not specifically designed for bargain-hunting, but users who activate the program and speak a product name will get Google Shopping results.
People who prefer Yahoo Shopping can get that instead. Yahoo's Mobile Search program, which works on many types of phones, also has voice recognition.
What's more, a voice-recognition program called Vlingo gives iPhone users an easy way to access Yahoo search.
"Product search is one of the five most common things that people do with our mobile search," said Vlingo chief executive Dave Grannan.
"It only takes a couple seconds and – as anyone who has ever done price comparisons on the Web knows – it can save a lot of money."
The mobile shopping programs can make shopping for gifts much more efficient, but analysts say few shoppers will use them regularly this Christmas.
That may change as the programs get new features, such as the ability to instantly purchase products from the merchants that appear on the product searches.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-compare_14bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4a4dcdd.html
http://snipurl.com/83occ
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tip of the Week: Toys for Windows XP By J. D. BIERSDORFER
December 11, 2008
Q & A
Tip of the Week: Toys for Windows XP By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Toys are in great demand every holiday season, so why not some for Windows XP? It largely retired the system this year, but Microsoft still offers its free collection of PowerToys for Windows XP at snipurl.com/7nlqk. The PowerToy box includes Image Resizer (for changing picture sizes by right-clicking), a Taskbar Magnifier (to magnify part of the screen from the Windows Taskbar) and TweakUI — a utility for adjusting user-interface settings that Window XP normally hides. The PowerToys are only for Windows XP, but Vista owners can download the free basic TweakVI program at totalidea.com to customize many Vista settings.
Q & A
Tip of the Week: Toys for Windows XP By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Toys are in great demand every holiday season, so why not some for Windows XP? It largely retired the system this year, but Microsoft still offers its free collection of PowerToys for Windows XP at snipurl.com/7nlqk. The PowerToy box includes Image Resizer (for changing picture sizes by right-clicking), a Taskbar Magnifier (to magnify part of the screen from the Windows Taskbar) and TweakUI — a utility for adjusting user-interface settings that Window XP normally hides. The PowerToys are only for Windows XP, but Vista owners can download the free basic TweakVI program at totalidea.com to customize many Vista settings.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Ruling Is a Victory for Supporters of Free Software
August 14, 2008
Ruling Is a Victory for Supporters of Free Software
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — A legal dispute involving model railroad hobbyists has resulted in a major courtroom victory for the free software movement also known as open-source software.
In a ruling Wednesday, the federal appeals court in Washington said that just because a software programmer gave his work away did not mean it could not be protected.
The decision legitimizes the use of commercial contracts for the distribution of computer software and digital artistic works for the public good. The court ruling also bolsters the open-source movement by easing the concerns of large organizations about relying on free software from hobbyists and hackers who have freely contributed time and energy without pay.
It also has implications for the Creative Commons license, a framework for modifying and sharing creative works that was developed in 2002 by Larry Lessig, a law professor at Stanford.
That license is now used widely by organizations like M.I.T. for distributing courseware, and Wikipedia, the Web-based encyclopedia. In March, the rock band Nine Inch Nails released a collection of musical tracks under a Creative Commons license.
The ambiguity facing open-source licensing has been one of the hurdles facing the movement, said Joichi Ito, the chief executive of Creative Commons.
“From a practical business perspective when big companies and their legal teams look at Creative Commons there are a number of questions,” he said. “It’s been one of the things their legal teams throw at us.”
The appeals court decision reverses a San Francisco federal court ruling over the misappropriation of a software program by a company that publishes model train hobbyist software.
The free software, or open source, community has quarreled for several years with Matthew A. Katzer, a Portland, Ore., businessman who owns Kam Industries. Previously, Mr. Katzer has sued free software developers for patent infringement and the free software community has argued that he had failed to disclose earlier technology, known as prior art, in his patent filings.
A lawyer for Mr. Katzer did not return calls asking for comment.
In March 2006, Robert G. Jacobsen, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Katzer claiming that his company was distributing a commercial software program that had taken software code from the Java Model Railroad Interface project and was redistributing the program without the credits required as part of the open-source license it was distributed under.
The decision to appeal the lower court ruling, which said that the terms of the open-source contract were overly broad, was intensely debated within the free software movement. Some open-source advocates had worried that a loss before the appeals court would have been a disaster for the community, which has grown as an economic force during the last quarter century.
“I was terrified that we would lose,” Mr. Jacobsen said. “But I thought it was the right thing to do.”
There has long been a link between model train hobbyists and the free software movement. During the 1950s, for example, hobbyists who worked on the wiring of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology model railroad club project were informally known as “hackers,” according to “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution” by Steven Levy. The term evolved to include people who developed and programmed computers and who passionately believed that software codes should be freely shared.
Mr. Jacobsen said he believed that the court’s ruling was significant for the free software movement because it had thrived not on monetary gain but on individual credit for contributions.
“We don’t charge for this and so all we really get is credit,” he said, adding that anyone is free to use and modify the programming instructions created by his group as long as they retain the credit and distribute them with the programmer’s instructions.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Speak Up, a Computer Is Listening By DAVID POGUE
August 7, 2008
State of the Art
Speak Up, a Computer Is Listening By DAVID POGUE
Of all the high-tech fantasies that sci-fi movies tantalize their escapist audiences with, surely that bit about giving your computer spoken orders is one of the most alluring. Ever since “Star Trek,” we’ve dreamed of being able to say, “Computer, display all known sources of dilithium crystals in the Kraxon Nebula!”
So far, the closest we can get is strapping on a headset and dictating, using a program like Dragon NaturallySpeaking to do the typing. This software is great for anyone who can’t type or doesn’t like to. And it lets you speak the names of menu commands and “click” links on a Web page.
But that’s not the same as telling the computer what to do in conversational English.
NaturallySpeaking 10, available Thursday, takes some baby steps in the right direction. It doesn’t turn your computer into the “Star Trek” mainframe; it doesn’t know what you mean by, for example, “Make this document shorter and funnier.” But in its timid, conservative way, it takes voice control unmistakably closer to that holy grail of computing.
NatSpeak’s principal mission, though, is to type out, into any Windows program, whatever you say. And in version 10, its maker, Nuance, claims to have eked out yet another 20 percent accuracy improvement.
I installed the program, donned the included headset and clicked “Skip initial training.” (In the early days of speech recognition, you had to read a 45-minute sample script to train the program to recognize your voice. Today, the software is so good, you can skip the training altogether.)
As a quick test, I read aloud the first 1,000 words of “Freakonomics” into Microsoft Word. Impressively enough, NatSpeak effortlessly transcribed words like “Ku Klux Klan” and “Punic war.” It did, however, mistype seven easier words (“addition” instead of “edition,” for example, and “per trail” instead of “portrayal”). Accuracy tally with no training: 99.3 percent. Not too shabby.
Then I tried a second test: I read one of the five-minute training scripts (a Kennedy speech), which is recommended for even better initial accuracy. I again read the first 1,000 words of “Freakonomics,” and the program mistyped five words. Accuracy this time: 99.5 percent.
In both cases, the number of spelling mistakes was zero. People who use NaturallySpeaking never make typos, only wordos.
As you correct the mistakes with your voice — a speedy, streamlined procedure — the program learns. Whether you skip initial training or not, accuracy inches toward perfection over time.
One way that Nuance has improved accuracy is by acknowledging, for the first time, that not everyone speaks alike. Version 10 recognizes eight accents: general (none), Australian, British, Indian, Great Lakes (Buffalo to Chicago), Southeast Asian, Southern United States and Spanish. If you don’t specify, the program will identify you automatically.
Isn’t that somehow politically incorrect? Should a software program treat you differently depending on how you sound?
Ah, the heck with it. It’s dictation software. A little stereotyping can go a long way.
Speed is another virtue in version 10. The program still waits for a pause in your talking before it types, so that it can use context to choose, for example, the correct homonym (there/they’re/their). But that waiting period has been halved; text appears almost instantaneously at each pause.
Second — and here’s where things start to get Star Trekky — the program understands more “natural language” commands.
For example, italicizing something you’ve already typed, say, the phrase “gas prices,” used to require three separate commands. First, “Select gas prices.” Then, “Italicize that.” Finally, to move your insertion point back where you stopped, “Go to end of document.”
In version 10, a single command does the trick: “italicize ‘gas prices.’” The program makes the change and returns to where you stopped, all in a blink. The same trick also works with the verbs “bold,” “underline,” “delete,” “cut” and “copy.” (Yes, “bold” is a verb now.)
You can speak a series of new Search commands, beginning with “Search computer for ...,” “Search the Web for ...,” “Search e-mail for ...” and so on.
For example: “Search maps for Chinese restaurants near Hoboken.” Or “Search Wikipedia for Bay of Pigs.” Or “Search images for Gwyneth Paltrow.” These shortcuts work 100 percent reliably and do truly save you time and typing. Next version: more of them, please.
And now, the NatSpeak Frequently Asked Questions:
“Does NaturallySpeaking work on a Mac?” Yes, but only when the Mac is running Windows and you’re using a U.S.B. headset adapter. It works fantastically in Boot Camp and fast enough in VMware Fusion, an emulator program.
Of course, it might be simpler just to buy MacSpeech Dictate, a Mac program that uses the same Dragon recognition technology. The current version is fast and accurate, but it lags behind NatSpeak in features and power; it doesn’t even let you make corrections by voice, and therefore the accuracy never improves. But a 1.2 version, with voice correction and voice spelling, is in testing now.
“Can I transcribe interviews with it?” No. NatSpeak knows only one person’s voice: yours. It also requires a clean audio signal, like the one from a headset mike half an inch from your mouth.
“Can I dictate with a wireless Bluetooth earpiece?” Yes. In fact, version 10 greatly expands the number of compatible earpiece models (18 so far, listed at nuance.com). Accuracy may take a hit, though.
“Can I dictate into a pocket recorder and transcribe it later?” Yes. The setup is more involved, though: only some recorders are compatible, and you have to record 15 minutes of training.
“Doesn’t Windows Vista come with speech recognition?” Yes, and it’s really good — quite similar to NatSpeak, actually. But Nuance says that, oddly enough, Vista has had virtually no effect on NatSpeak sales.
I’m guessing that obscurity is part of the reason; most people aren’t even aware that Vista offers such a feature. Vista doesn’t come with the required headset, either. Nor does the Vista version offer the same accuracy, features or power of NatSpeak, and it isn’t available in other languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and so on).
NatSpeak is available in a number of versions. The Standard edition ($100) has the same accuracy as the others, but it’s just for bare-bones dictation.
To get the more advanced goodies described in this review — the natural-language commands, Bluetooth mikes and recorders — you need the Preferred edition ($200). It also lets you set up voice macros that type out boilerplate text. For example, you can say, “Buzz off,” and it will type: “Thanks for thinking of me! Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m unable to accept your kind offer at this time.”
There are also medical and legal editions ($1,600 and $1,200, yikes), as well as a Professional edition ($900) for corporate administrators who want to manage many NatSpeak installations from a central server. The Pro version also recognizes natural-language commands for Microsoft Outlook, like “Send e-mail to Mom” or “Schedule a meeting with Barack Obama and John McCain.”
Apart from Vista, NatSpeak really has no competition. Philips has dropped out of the American market. I.B.M.’s own ViaVoice hasn’t been updated since 2003, and its sole distributor is, get this, Nuance.
Maybe that’s why Nuance makes only small, confident changes from one version of NatSpeak to the next. Without any rivals, why add bells and whistles that risk mucking up the program’s virtues?
As a result, existing NaturallySpeaking owners can usually afford to skip a generation between upgrades. Version 10 is a healthy leap ahead of version 8, but version 9 owners shouldn’t feel compelled to upgrade.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some real work to do: “Search maps for dilithium crystals near New York City. ...”
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
State of the Art
Speak Up, a Computer Is Listening By DAVID POGUE
Of all the high-tech fantasies that sci-fi movies tantalize their escapist audiences with, surely that bit about giving your computer spoken orders is one of the most alluring. Ever since “Star Trek,” we’ve dreamed of being able to say, “Computer, display all known sources of dilithium crystals in the Kraxon Nebula!”
So far, the closest we can get is strapping on a headset and dictating, using a program like Dragon NaturallySpeaking to do the typing. This software is great for anyone who can’t type or doesn’t like to. And it lets you speak the names of menu commands and “click” links on a Web page.
But that’s not the same as telling the computer what to do in conversational English.
NaturallySpeaking 10, available Thursday, takes some baby steps in the right direction. It doesn’t turn your computer into the “Star Trek” mainframe; it doesn’t know what you mean by, for example, “Make this document shorter and funnier.” But in its timid, conservative way, it takes voice control unmistakably closer to that holy grail of computing.
NatSpeak’s principal mission, though, is to type out, into any Windows program, whatever you say. And in version 10, its maker, Nuance, claims to have eked out yet another 20 percent accuracy improvement.
I installed the program, donned the included headset and clicked “Skip initial training.” (In the early days of speech recognition, you had to read a 45-minute sample script to train the program to recognize your voice. Today, the software is so good, you can skip the training altogether.)
As a quick test, I read aloud the first 1,000 words of “Freakonomics” into Microsoft Word. Impressively enough, NatSpeak effortlessly transcribed words like “Ku Klux Klan” and “Punic war.” It did, however, mistype seven easier words (“addition” instead of “edition,” for example, and “per trail” instead of “portrayal”). Accuracy tally with no training: 99.3 percent. Not too shabby.
Then I tried a second test: I read one of the five-minute training scripts (a Kennedy speech), which is recommended for even better initial accuracy. I again read the first 1,000 words of “Freakonomics,” and the program mistyped five words. Accuracy this time: 99.5 percent.
In both cases, the number of spelling mistakes was zero. People who use NaturallySpeaking never make typos, only wordos.
As you correct the mistakes with your voice — a speedy, streamlined procedure — the program learns. Whether you skip initial training or not, accuracy inches toward perfection over time.
One way that Nuance has improved accuracy is by acknowledging, for the first time, that not everyone speaks alike. Version 10 recognizes eight accents: general (none), Australian, British, Indian, Great Lakes (Buffalo to Chicago), Southeast Asian, Southern United States and Spanish. If you don’t specify, the program will identify you automatically.
Isn’t that somehow politically incorrect? Should a software program treat you differently depending on how you sound?
Ah, the heck with it. It’s dictation software. A little stereotyping can go a long way.
Speed is another virtue in version 10. The program still waits for a pause in your talking before it types, so that it can use context to choose, for example, the correct homonym (there/they’re/their). But that waiting period has been halved; text appears almost instantaneously at each pause.
Second — and here’s where things start to get Star Trekky — the program understands more “natural language” commands.
For example, italicizing something you’ve already typed, say, the phrase “gas prices,” used to require three separate commands. First, “Select gas prices.” Then, “Italicize that.” Finally, to move your insertion point back where you stopped, “Go to end of document.”
In version 10, a single command does the trick: “italicize ‘gas prices.’” The program makes the change and returns to where you stopped, all in a blink. The same trick also works with the verbs “bold,” “underline,” “delete,” “cut” and “copy.” (Yes, “bold” is a verb now.)
You can speak a series of new Search commands, beginning with “Search computer for ...,” “Search the Web for ...,” “Search e-mail for ...” and so on.
For example: “Search maps for Chinese restaurants near Hoboken.” Or “Search Wikipedia for Bay of Pigs.” Or “Search images for Gwyneth Paltrow.” These shortcuts work 100 percent reliably and do truly save you time and typing. Next version: more of them, please.
And now, the NatSpeak Frequently Asked Questions:
“Does NaturallySpeaking work on a Mac?” Yes, but only when the Mac is running Windows and you’re using a U.S.B. headset adapter. It works fantastically in Boot Camp and fast enough in VMware Fusion, an emulator program.
Of course, it might be simpler just to buy MacSpeech Dictate, a Mac program that uses the same Dragon recognition technology. The current version is fast and accurate, but it lags behind NatSpeak in features and power; it doesn’t even let you make corrections by voice, and therefore the accuracy never improves. But a 1.2 version, with voice correction and voice spelling, is in testing now.
“Can I transcribe interviews with it?” No. NatSpeak knows only one person’s voice: yours. It also requires a clean audio signal, like the one from a headset mike half an inch from your mouth.
“Can I dictate with a wireless Bluetooth earpiece?” Yes. In fact, version 10 greatly expands the number of compatible earpiece models (18 so far, listed at nuance.com). Accuracy may take a hit, though.
“Can I dictate into a pocket recorder and transcribe it later?” Yes. The setup is more involved, though: only some recorders are compatible, and you have to record 15 minutes of training.
“Doesn’t Windows Vista come with speech recognition?” Yes, and it’s really good — quite similar to NatSpeak, actually. But Nuance says that, oddly enough, Vista has had virtually no effect on NatSpeak sales.
I’m guessing that obscurity is part of the reason; most people aren’t even aware that Vista offers such a feature. Vista doesn’t come with the required headset, either. Nor does the Vista version offer the same accuracy, features or power of NatSpeak, and it isn’t available in other languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and so on).
NatSpeak is available in a number of versions. The Standard edition ($100) has the same accuracy as the others, but it’s just for bare-bones dictation.
To get the more advanced goodies described in this review — the natural-language commands, Bluetooth mikes and recorders — you need the Preferred edition ($200). It also lets you set up voice macros that type out boilerplate text. For example, you can say, “Buzz off,” and it will type: “Thanks for thinking of me! Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m unable to accept your kind offer at this time.”
There are also medical and legal editions ($1,600 and $1,200, yikes), as well as a Professional edition ($900) for corporate administrators who want to manage many NatSpeak installations from a central server. The Pro version also recognizes natural-language commands for Microsoft Outlook, like “Send e-mail to Mom” or “Schedule a meeting with Barack Obama and John McCain.”
Apart from Vista, NatSpeak really has no competition. Philips has dropped out of the American market. I.B.M.’s own ViaVoice hasn’t been updated since 2003, and its sole distributor is, get this, Nuance.
Maybe that’s why Nuance makes only small, confident changes from one version of NatSpeak to the next. Without any rivals, why add bells and whistles that risk mucking up the program’s virtues?
As a result, existing NaturallySpeaking owners can usually afford to skip a generation between upgrades. Version 10 is a healthy leap ahead of version 8, but version 9 owners shouldn’t feel compelled to upgrade.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some real work to do: “Search maps for dilithium crystals near New York City. ...”
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
June 5, 2008
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
June 5, 2008
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
MySpace Mind-Set Finally Shows Up at the Office By LAURIE J. FLYNN
April 9, 2008
MySpace Mind-Set Finally Shows Up at the Office By LAURIE J. FLYNN
AS online social networking weaves itself more extensively into the fabric of everyday life, a new class of technology vendors has set out to make the social Web relevant in the workplace, too.
These companies, with names like InsideView and Genius, seek to integrate broad Internet searching with social networking and business intelligence software to give workers access to interrelated pools of information.
“There’s a value in who knows whom that companies are trying to unlock,” said Antony Brydon, co-founder of Visible Path, a social networking company acquired by Hoover’s, a publishing and market intelligence company, in January.
Despite the huge popularity of networks like MySpace and Facebook, they have had a slow start in the business world, where I.T. managers and executives remain leery of them. But that is starting to change as the technology is becoming more integrated into corporate software applications.
“The enterprise segment is trailing the others significantly,” Mr. Brydon said. “But it’s getting traction like never before.”
These days, more companies are starting to appreciate the potential benefits of social networking programs like Visible Path, as well as communications programs, like SelectMinds, that put workers, clients and others in touch with one another. “Social networking solves a lot of problems in the enterprise,” Mr. Brydon said. It can, for example, relieve overburdened corporate e-mail systems by moving much of the group communications to another realm.
As social networking technology has become a more familiar part of the landscape at many companies, it has brought a new buzzword: “socialprise,” referring to the mash-up of social networking features and standard enterprise computing applications.
“In its basic form, companies using social networking are trying to help employees put a face on the other people in the firm,” Mr. Brydon said.
Visible Path is a sort of corporate version of LinkedIn, the popular networking tool that maps the connections among people, providing them with a view of who knows whom among their contacts. Visible Path performs a similar function for the corporate world by working with the existing software infrastructure, giving employees in a company a map of their contacts and their contacts’ relationships. Dun & Bradstreet has used the technology to add relationship mapping to its Hoover’s online catalogs of corporate and executive information.
Further movement of social networking into business appears inevitable. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, among others, are increasingly adding social networking features to their corporate software applications.
Late last year, Oracle announced an on-demand version of its sales-automation software, CRM On Demand, that includes social networking features similar to those found in MySpace or Facebook, like the ability to create and join groups through its Sticky Notes and Message Center functions. Likewise, Microsoft is adding social networking to its SharePoint program, a Microsoft Office tool for letting groups work together. And just last month, Cisco Systems announced it was buying Tribe.net, a small social-networking site that will allow it to help clients bring their customers together online.
Today the battle lines in corporate social media are being drawn between established technology companies like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, social media companies like Facebook and MySpace, and start-ups focused from the beginning on business. Corporations are eager to find out the sources of more of these applications — and when they are going to arrive. For them, the true “killer app” remains to be seen.
“It’s an open question who’s going to win this battle,” Mr. Brydon said. “As a whole, the question the Fortune 500 is asking is where is the Facebook for the Fortune 500 that can do for us what Facebook and MySpace have done for consumers?”
Some businesses have adopted social networking to better identify job candidates, in part by helping them maintain relationships with former employees who could serve as an informal recruiting network. SelectMinds works with a company’s enterprise software to create an electronic water cooler where former employees and managers can keep in touch.
“Companies are looking at the knowledge loss and wondering if they can do something to retain it better,” said Mike Gotta, principal analyst with the Burton Group.
Social networking is also finding its way into the sales department, as something of an automated prospecting tool. Programs like InsideView’s SalesView help sales teams identify leads and target customers by scouring more than 20,000 information sources, from the most popular social-networking sites to job boards, blogs and news sites.
For example, a salesman for a financial services company might use SalesView to get information on a prospective client, from her job history and education to her hobbies and favorite restaurants. “The guys who are using this information think of it as a competitive advantage,” said Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer at InsideView, based in Foster City, Calif. On the other hand, there is what Schulman calls the “creepy factor” behind the ease with which companies could use this new class of programs to peruse personal information.
For the past year, Joe Busateri has been looking for a better way to tap into the collective intelligence of his company, MasterCard. Mr. Busateri, a senior business leader in the Global Technology and Operations business unit, has turned to social networking technology to create a system to get employees talking, brainstorming and cooperating across departments.
“The goal is to try to stimulate innovation, to share information and collect ideas,” he said. He has established blogs and wikis, including a site called Priceless Ideas, where employees can broadcast their latest inspiration.
After spending the past few years snubbing the social networking craze as a time-wasting hobby for teenagers (more than 11 percent of online time is spent on MySpace, according to a new study by Compete, a Web analysis company), even the largest companies are beginning to see value in using Internet technology to foster employee communications. But that’s not to say that all enterprises are ready to embrace social networking.
For some corporate managers, the prospect of investing in something that has long been seen as consumer technology is nerve-racking, given the hard economic lessons of the Internet era. For others, promoting unmoderated communications among employees and customers is scary. And then there’s the notion that social networking’s potential to waste employees’ time might outweigh its benefits.
“A lot of companies had been looking at social networking the same way they were looking at the Internet 15 years ago,” said Denis Pombriant, a consultant and technology analyst at Beagle Research Group. “They saw that the Internet could be useful, but in the meantime a lot of investment dollars went up in smoke.”
MySpace Mind-Set Finally Shows Up at the Office By LAURIE J. FLYNN
AS online social networking weaves itself more extensively into the fabric of everyday life, a new class of technology vendors has set out to make the social Web relevant in the workplace, too.
These companies, with names like InsideView and Genius, seek to integrate broad Internet searching with social networking and business intelligence software to give workers access to interrelated pools of information.
“There’s a value in who knows whom that companies are trying to unlock,” said Antony Brydon, co-founder of Visible Path, a social networking company acquired by Hoover’s, a publishing and market intelligence company, in January.
Despite the huge popularity of networks like MySpace and Facebook, they have had a slow start in the business world, where I.T. managers and executives remain leery of them. But that is starting to change as the technology is becoming more integrated into corporate software applications.
“The enterprise segment is trailing the others significantly,” Mr. Brydon said. “But it’s getting traction like never before.”
These days, more companies are starting to appreciate the potential benefits of social networking programs like Visible Path, as well as communications programs, like SelectMinds, that put workers, clients and others in touch with one another. “Social networking solves a lot of problems in the enterprise,” Mr. Brydon said. It can, for example, relieve overburdened corporate e-mail systems by moving much of the group communications to another realm.
As social networking technology has become a more familiar part of the landscape at many companies, it has brought a new buzzword: “socialprise,” referring to the mash-up of social networking features and standard enterprise computing applications.
“In its basic form, companies using social networking are trying to help employees put a face on the other people in the firm,” Mr. Brydon said.
Visible Path is a sort of corporate version of LinkedIn, the popular networking tool that maps the connections among people, providing them with a view of who knows whom among their contacts. Visible Path performs a similar function for the corporate world by working with the existing software infrastructure, giving employees in a company a map of their contacts and their contacts’ relationships. Dun & Bradstreet has used the technology to add relationship mapping to its Hoover’s online catalogs of corporate and executive information.
Further movement of social networking into business appears inevitable. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, among others, are increasingly adding social networking features to their corporate software applications.
Late last year, Oracle announced an on-demand version of its sales-automation software, CRM On Demand, that includes social networking features similar to those found in MySpace or Facebook, like the ability to create and join groups through its Sticky Notes and Message Center functions. Likewise, Microsoft is adding social networking to its SharePoint program, a Microsoft Office tool for letting groups work together. And just last month, Cisco Systems announced it was buying Tribe.net, a small social-networking site that will allow it to help clients bring their customers together online.
Today the battle lines in corporate social media are being drawn between established technology companies like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, social media companies like Facebook and MySpace, and start-ups focused from the beginning on business. Corporations are eager to find out the sources of more of these applications — and when they are going to arrive. For them, the true “killer app” remains to be seen.
“It’s an open question who’s going to win this battle,” Mr. Brydon said. “As a whole, the question the Fortune 500 is asking is where is the Facebook for the Fortune 500 that can do for us what Facebook and MySpace have done for consumers?”
Some businesses have adopted social networking to better identify job candidates, in part by helping them maintain relationships with former employees who could serve as an informal recruiting network. SelectMinds works with a company’s enterprise software to create an electronic water cooler where former employees and managers can keep in touch.
“Companies are looking at the knowledge loss and wondering if they can do something to retain it better,” said Mike Gotta, principal analyst with the Burton Group.
Social networking is also finding its way into the sales department, as something of an automated prospecting tool. Programs like InsideView’s SalesView help sales teams identify leads and target customers by scouring more than 20,000 information sources, from the most popular social-networking sites to job boards, blogs and news sites.
For example, a salesman for a financial services company might use SalesView to get information on a prospective client, from her job history and education to her hobbies and favorite restaurants. “The guys who are using this information think of it as a competitive advantage,” said Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer at InsideView, based in Foster City, Calif. On the other hand, there is what Schulman calls the “creepy factor” behind the ease with which companies could use this new class of programs to peruse personal information.
For the past year, Joe Busateri has been looking for a better way to tap into the collective intelligence of his company, MasterCard. Mr. Busateri, a senior business leader in the Global Technology and Operations business unit, has turned to social networking technology to create a system to get employees talking, brainstorming and cooperating across departments.
“The goal is to try to stimulate innovation, to share information and collect ideas,” he said. He has established blogs and wikis, including a site called Priceless Ideas, where employees can broadcast their latest inspiration.
After spending the past few years snubbing the social networking craze as a time-wasting hobby for teenagers (more than 11 percent of online time is spent on MySpace, according to a new study by Compete, a Web analysis company), even the largest companies are beginning to see value in using Internet technology to foster employee communications. But that’s not to say that all enterprises are ready to embrace social networking.
For some corporate managers, the prospect of investing in something that has long been seen as consumer technology is nerve-racking, given the hard economic lessons of the Internet era. For others, promoting unmoderated communications among employees and customers is scary. And then there’s the notion that social networking’s potential to waste employees’ time might outweigh its benefits.
“A lot of companies had been looking at social networking the same way they were looking at the Internet 15 years ago,” said Denis Pombriant, a consultant and technology analyst at Beagle Research Group. “They saw that the Internet could be useful, but in the meantime a lot of investment dollars went up in smoke.”
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Soup Up Your Cellphone By KEVIN C. TOFEL
November 29, 2007
Basics
Soup Up Your Cellphone By KEVIN C. TOFEL
It is all too easy to get caught up in the hype that comes with the latest and greatest cellphones. And right now, the latest and greatest are the iPhone and the iPhone clones that, with a touch of the finger, open up maps, restaurant listings and the weather.
If those phones are too pricey for your budget or you've got more months on your contract with your carrier, there might be another way to get some of those handy services on your phone: widgets. (For a touch screen, you'll just have to wait.)
Widgets are small applications, most often free, that appear on your phone's menu pages. They deliver news or information to most handsets. You can use them to track down a cab company or follow stock prices. Other widgets deliver maps or headlines from media sources like the BBC, Bloomberg and this newspaper. For anyone with a smartphone that has the ability to connect to the Internet, it might make sense to simply use the included Web browser to visit Google Maps, YouTube and such, but if you're looking to extend the life of an older handset, widgets are a good option.
Widgets will not turn your vintage Motorola StarTAC into an iPhone, but they will add features and functions that you didn't think your phone could ever possess. There are several Web sites that offer widgets like GetMobio.com, Plusmo.com, Openwave.com and WidSets.com.
WidSets is one of the most popular such places because it has a large library of more than 2,650 widgets that work on more than 300 devices from all the leading manufacturers, even though the site is affiliated with Nokia, the world's largest maker of handsets. Most phones made in the last three years are supported by WidSets, including golden oldies like the Motorola RAZR V3.
GetMobio has fewer widgets and supports about 90 phones, but among its widgets are a cheap-gas finder, a store locator and something called the Panic Kit, which locates locksmiths, cab companies and pharmacies at the spur of the moment. Plusmo's roster is not as extensive, but among its widgets are applications to bring in news from CNN and a daily Peanuts cartoon.
Why would you use widgets when your carrier might offer similar applications? To save money. Cellular providers do not make much money selling handsets to consumers; in fact, they typically subsidize your handset purchase. By paying for a portion of your device, they're investing in you for the next two years. Over the contract's life, the real money is made in monthly service plan fees, overage charges and the extra services they can offer you.
That's where free widgets come in. You can avoid paying for extra services like news headlines and sports information that carriers typically bundle in packages for $5, $10, $20 or more. Often, you do not need the whole bundle, just one small feature like a stock price ticker or a weather update. Single-purpose widgets might serve your purpose (and your budget) better since you're installing only what you need.
While widgets are usually free, you can still end up paying your carrier for data transfer or airtime. The widgets need to piggyback on your cellular connection for data. Verify with your carrier that you either have some data allowance included in your plan or that it will charge only a nominal fee for small amounts of data. (Afterward, you can use the Traffic Feature in WidSets widgets to track how much data airtime you use.) Occasional updates of text data may seem small, but they add up quickly, so prepare accordingly with your service provider and monthly plan.
It does not matter whether your phone is on the CDMA network that Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel use or the GSM network that AT&T and T-Mobile use. The determining factor for widget compatibility is whether your phone supports Java software, or more specifically what is known as Java MIDP 2.0. With a few notable exceptions, like the Apple iPhone, Java is fairly commonplace in handsets because it gives the wireless carriers a flexible and easy way to add services. Smartphones that run on Windows Mobile, Palm and even BlackBerry operating systems also support Java, though on some phones you may have to download it first.
It is easy to install widgets. Go to WidSets.com to verify whether your phone can accept widgets. Widgets that you select are sent directly to your handset along with a WidSets application to run them. The process should take less than five minutes.
Here are some popular and most recommended widgets to get you started:
¶AccuWeather. One of the most useful widgets is also one of the most popular; at last check, more than 125,000 people were running this widget. And why not when you can get the weather forecast, including local current weather, extended forecasts and even radar maps?
¶Google Calendar. The Web-based calendar is with you everywhere with this widget. The best part? Update your calendar in one place on the Internet and the changes are viewable on other devices.
¶Wikipedia. There's an option to turn off images in this encyclopedia and provide just text to speed up the information download as well as reduce the amount of data transferred.
¶YouTube. This widget might be a little more limited than the iPhone's YouTube application, but you can still catch recently added videos and more.
¶Flickr. One of the most popular photo-sharing services on the Internet is right in the palm of your hand. You can view your photos and those that your friends and family have uploaded or search by a keyword to see what's out there.
¶Private Chat. Those instant-message fees add up quickly. Get your closest friends to install this widget and pay for just the airtime in real-time chat sessions. With over 350,000 users, you'll never be lonely again, but you might want to invest in an unlimited data plan for this one.
¶Twitter. If you want a wider audience than just one chat participant, Twitter is the answer. This short-messaging service allows you to "micro-blog" your life in 140 character bursts.
¶Sudoku. You've got a number pad on that phone, so why not use it to exercise your brain?
¶EBay. Searching for that special item? Now you can do it all the time and everywhere.
¶Newsvine. A combination of mainstream news and user-generated opinions that offers up wide viewpoints on current topics. Start with headlines in the widget and read any story with a single click. You can also choose to have news that focuses on a keyword of your choice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/technology/personaltech/29basics.htm?sq=&st=cse%22Soup%20Up%20Your%20Cellphone=%22=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Basics
Soup Up Your Cellphone By KEVIN C. TOFEL
It is all too easy to get caught up in the hype that comes with the latest and greatest cellphones. And right now, the latest and greatest are the iPhone and the iPhone clones that, with a touch of the finger, open up maps, restaurant listings and the weather.
If those phones are too pricey for your budget or you've got more months on your contract with your carrier, there might be another way to get some of those handy services on your phone: widgets. (For a touch screen, you'll just have to wait.)
Widgets are small applications, most often free, that appear on your phone's menu pages. They deliver news or information to most handsets. You can use them to track down a cab company or follow stock prices. Other widgets deliver maps or headlines from media sources like the BBC, Bloomberg and this newspaper. For anyone with a smartphone that has the ability to connect to the Internet, it might make sense to simply use the included Web browser to visit Google Maps, YouTube and such, but if you're looking to extend the life of an older handset, widgets are a good option.
Widgets will not turn your vintage Motorola StarTAC into an iPhone, but they will add features and functions that you didn't think your phone could ever possess. There are several Web sites that offer widgets like GetMobio.com, Plusmo.com, Openwave.com and WidSets.com.
WidSets is one of the most popular such places because it has a large library of more than 2,650 widgets that work on more than 300 devices from all the leading manufacturers, even though the site is affiliated with Nokia, the world's largest maker of handsets. Most phones made in the last three years are supported by WidSets, including golden oldies like the Motorola RAZR V3.
GetMobio has fewer widgets and supports about 90 phones, but among its widgets are a cheap-gas finder, a store locator and something called the Panic Kit, which locates locksmiths, cab companies and pharmacies at the spur of the moment. Plusmo's roster is not as extensive, but among its widgets are applications to bring in news from CNN and a daily Peanuts cartoon.
Why would you use widgets when your carrier might offer similar applications? To save money. Cellular providers do not make much money selling handsets to consumers; in fact, they typically subsidize your handset purchase. By paying for a portion of your device, they're investing in you for the next two years. Over the contract's life, the real money is made in monthly service plan fees, overage charges and the extra services they can offer you.
That's where free widgets come in. You can avoid paying for extra services like news headlines and sports information that carriers typically bundle in packages for $5, $10, $20 or more. Often, you do not need the whole bundle, just one small feature like a stock price ticker or a weather update. Single-purpose widgets might serve your purpose (and your budget) better since you're installing only what you need.
While widgets are usually free, you can still end up paying your carrier for data transfer or airtime. The widgets need to piggyback on your cellular connection for data. Verify with your carrier that you either have some data allowance included in your plan or that it will charge only a nominal fee for small amounts of data. (Afterward, you can use the Traffic Feature in WidSets widgets to track how much data airtime you use.) Occasional updates of text data may seem small, but they add up quickly, so prepare accordingly with your service provider and monthly plan.
It does not matter whether your phone is on the CDMA network that Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel use or the GSM network that AT&T and T-Mobile use. The determining factor for widget compatibility is whether your phone supports Java software, or more specifically what is known as Java MIDP 2.0. With a few notable exceptions, like the Apple iPhone, Java is fairly commonplace in handsets because it gives the wireless carriers a flexible and easy way to add services. Smartphones that run on Windows Mobile, Palm and even BlackBerry operating systems also support Java, though on some phones you may have to download it first.
It is easy to install widgets. Go to WidSets.com to verify whether your phone can accept widgets. Widgets that you select are sent directly to your handset along with a WidSets application to run them. The process should take less than five minutes.
Here are some popular and most recommended widgets to get you started:
¶AccuWeather. One of the most useful widgets is also one of the most popular; at last check, more than 125,000 people were running this widget. And why not when you can get the weather forecast, including local current weather, extended forecasts and even radar maps?
¶Google Calendar. The Web-based calendar is with you everywhere with this widget. The best part? Update your calendar in one place on the Internet and the changes are viewable on other devices.
¶Wikipedia. There's an option to turn off images in this encyclopedia and provide just text to speed up the information download as well as reduce the amount of data transferred.
¶YouTube. This widget might be a little more limited than the iPhone's YouTube application, but you can still catch recently added videos and more.
¶Flickr. One of the most popular photo-sharing services on the Internet is right in the palm of your hand. You can view your photos and those that your friends and family have uploaded or search by a keyword to see what's out there.
¶Private Chat. Those instant-message fees add up quickly. Get your closest friends to install this widget and pay for just the airtime in real-time chat sessions. With over 350,000 users, you'll never be lonely again, but you might want to invest in an unlimited data plan for this one.
¶Twitter. If you want a wider audience than just one chat participant, Twitter is the answer. This short-messaging service allows you to "micro-blog" your life in 140 character bursts.
¶Sudoku. You've got a number pad on that phone, so why not use it to exercise your brain?
¶EBay. Searching for that special item? Now you can do it all the time and everywhere.
¶Newsvine. A combination of mainstream news and user-generated opinions that offers up wide viewpoints on current topics. Start with headlines in the widget and read any story with a single click. You can also choose to have news that focuses on a keyword of your choice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/technology/personaltech/29basics.htm?sq=&st=cse%22Soup%20Up%20Your%20Cellphone=%22=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Record of Your Life as a Digital Archive By ERIC A. TAUB
August 16, 2007
Basics
The Record of Your Life as a Digital Archive By ERIC A. TAUB
WHEN Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Karen Duncan was ordered to leave her uptown neighborhood.
Among the possessions that Ms. Duncan, a lawyer, and her family took on their evacuation to Mississippi and later to Baton Rouge were two large trunks, filled not with clothes, but with the stacks of paper that recorded their life: photographs, birth certificates and their dog's immunization records.
"This is not going to happen again," Ms. Duncan said. "The next time, I'm carrying a digital flash drive — not trunks — loaded with my pictures."
Ms. Duncan, like millions of other Americans, has her feet firmly straddled across two technologies: embracing the new digital era but still hanging on to the paper records of the fast-disappearing analog age.
There are many reasons to digitize one's precious records and store them on a PC: to preserve them from aging, to make multiple copies that can be kept in separate places, and to create multimedia slide shows, perhaps to show future generations.
Digitizing records, whether documents, old photographs, or favorite LPs, "preserves history and lets people tell their stories," said Mark Cook, marketing director for Kodak Gallery, a Web site that stores consumer photographs.
"People want to use their content with today's tools, like iPhoto and YouTube," to create new forms of entertainment, Mr. Cook said.
Today, virtually any traditional document, movie or musical recording can be inexpensively and rapidly digitized and stored on a hard drive. And for those who do not want to spend the time, low-cost commercial services will do the job for you.
DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS So-called all-in-one printers have become the norm, with machines that print, scan and handle faxes available for under $100.
Optical character recognition software, included with such devices, will recognize printed text and convert it into a form that can be edited by a word processing program.
Photographs can be scanned and saved in the JPEG format at resolutions of at least 1,200 dots per inch. Once in a PC, software like Adobe Photoshop Elements ($80 for the Mac version; $100 for the PC version) can enhance faded colors, remove scratches and crop the image, just as with pictures shot with a digital camera.
Hewlett-Packard's all-in-one printers can scan in one pass as many photographs as will fit on the scanning tray, then save them as separate images.
Epson's Perfection 4490 ($350) includes a 30-page document feeder and scans up to three black-and-white pages a minute; it also scans 35 millimeter slides, negatives and photographs.
H.P.'s Scanjet G4050 ($200) scans up to 16 slides or 30 negatives simultaneously, and saves them as separate files. It does not, however, include an automatic sheet feeder for documents.
A number of services will do the conversions for you, either at storefronts or by mail, like Scanmyphotos.com. For those who are concerned about letting their precious memories out of sight, Kodak offers batch digitizing of photographs and other documents through its ScanVan, a vehicle that is currently on tour in the Eastern United States.
HOME MOVIES The simplest way to digitize those shoeboxes full of Super 8 movies is to use the technique perfected by movie pirates: project the image on a white wall, set up a digital camcorder on a tripod, and then shoot the film.
This is one case where you won't get the best results if you make it a do-it-yourself project. The different frame rates of movie film and a camcorder could cause annoying flickering of the final image. Send your movies to a commercial transfer service like Audio Video Memories (audiovideomemories.com), Digital Transfer Systems (digitaltransfersystems.net), and Just8mm.com that uses a telecine machine, a much more sophisticated version of the same home technique.
Movies arrive back on DVDs, ready to be imported into the PC for editing with a program like Apple's iMovie ($79, part of iLife '08) for Macs, or for PCs, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 ($100).
VHS TAPES To transfer VHS footage, which is analog, into a computer, the PC needs to receive the data digitally. One way to check if your PC is so equipped to do that is to look at the computer's ports. If it has the familiar RCA inputs — the yellow, white, and red connectors — then it most likely is analog ready.
If not, analog images must first be converted to the digital format. To do so, combination VHS/DVD player/recorders are one of the simplest ways to get your home movies off your aging video tapes and onto more permanent DVDs. Available from Panasonic, Sony and others, prices start at under $200.
Alternatively, connect a stand-alone VHS player to a DVD recorder to make a digital copy.
VHS tapes can also be recorded onto a computer's hard drive by plugging the VCR's output cable into a digital camcorder that offers a "pass through" mode (most do). The signal is digitized within the camcorder, and then passed on to the PC's hard drive.
Sony's $229 VRD-MC5 is specifically made to record DVD copies of VHS tapes, or recordings from any camcorder or digital video recorder, without using a PC. VCRs and camcorders are plugged into the device, which resembles a portable DVD deck.
If you do not own a camcorder or DVD recorder, but you have loads of valuable tapes, consider an intermediary conversion product, such as the DAC-200 ($184; synchrotech.com); Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge ($300; omegamultimedia.com), and VHS to DVD 3.0 ($80; honestech.com). Each product includes hardware and software that converts analog signals to digital,.
LPS, EIGHT-TRACKS, AND CASSETTES Getting your old Country Joe and the Fish albums into your PC is one of the easiest conversions to do, according to Tom Merritt, executive editor of CNetTV.com.
Assuming you still have a phonograph turntable (or eight-track or cassette deck) and it is not the console type from the 1950s or earlier, plug the audio output from the turntable's amplifier/receiver into the minimike port found on virtually all home computers.
While commercial audio editing software is available, Mr. Merritt recommends installing Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net), a free program available for Macs, PCs and Linux/Unix machines that will manage the files, convert them into a specific format (for example, WAV or MP3), and remove clicks and crackles.
For those who value their time more than the fun of connecting cables and reading manuals, there are plenty of commercial companies happy to do the converting for you. Cassettes2CDs.com will convert audio and video tapes, LPs and 45s to digital format, storing the data on a CD, DVD or MP3 format for iPod use. The company does not handle 78 r.p.m. records, reel-to-reel or eight-track tapes.
If the thought of gathering up boxes full of photographs or phonograph records to digitize is daunting, here is one other compelling thought: your treasured memories will be in a digital format that can still be easily converted to the next video and audio formats that will invariably show up in the coming years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/technology/circuits/16basics.html?pagewanted=print
null
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/technology/16Basics_AudioLink.mp3
Basics
The Record of Your Life as a Digital Archive By ERIC A. TAUB
WHEN Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Karen Duncan was ordered to leave her uptown neighborhood.
Among the possessions that Ms. Duncan, a lawyer, and her family took on their evacuation to Mississippi and later to Baton Rouge were two large trunks, filled not with clothes, but with the stacks of paper that recorded their life: photographs, birth certificates and their dog's immunization records.
"This is not going to happen again," Ms. Duncan said. "The next time, I'm carrying a digital flash drive — not trunks — loaded with my pictures."
Ms. Duncan, like millions of other Americans, has her feet firmly straddled across two technologies: embracing the new digital era but still hanging on to the paper records of the fast-disappearing analog age.
There are many reasons to digitize one's precious records and store them on a PC: to preserve them from aging, to make multiple copies that can be kept in separate places, and to create multimedia slide shows, perhaps to show future generations.
Digitizing records, whether documents, old photographs, or favorite LPs, "preserves history and lets people tell their stories," said Mark Cook, marketing director for Kodak Gallery, a Web site that stores consumer photographs.
"People want to use their content with today's tools, like iPhoto and YouTube," to create new forms of entertainment, Mr. Cook said.
Today, virtually any traditional document, movie or musical recording can be inexpensively and rapidly digitized and stored on a hard drive. And for those who do not want to spend the time, low-cost commercial services will do the job for you.
DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS So-called all-in-one printers have become the norm, with machines that print, scan and handle faxes available for under $100.
Optical character recognition software, included with such devices, will recognize printed text and convert it into a form that can be edited by a word processing program.
Photographs can be scanned and saved in the JPEG format at resolutions of at least 1,200 dots per inch. Once in a PC, software like Adobe Photoshop Elements ($80 for the Mac version; $100 for the PC version) can enhance faded colors, remove scratches and crop the image, just as with pictures shot with a digital camera.
Hewlett-Packard's all-in-one printers can scan in one pass as many photographs as will fit on the scanning tray, then save them as separate images.
Epson's Perfection 4490 ($350) includes a 30-page document feeder and scans up to three black-and-white pages a minute; it also scans 35 millimeter slides, negatives and photographs.
H.P.'s Scanjet G4050 ($200) scans up to 16 slides or 30 negatives simultaneously, and saves them as separate files. It does not, however, include an automatic sheet feeder for documents.
A number of services will do the conversions for you, either at storefronts or by mail, like Scanmyphotos.com. For those who are concerned about letting their precious memories out of sight, Kodak offers batch digitizing of photographs and other documents through its ScanVan, a vehicle that is currently on tour in the Eastern United States.
HOME MOVIES The simplest way to digitize those shoeboxes full of Super 8 movies is to use the technique perfected by movie pirates: project the image on a white wall, set up a digital camcorder on a tripod, and then shoot the film.
This is one case where you won't get the best results if you make it a do-it-yourself project. The different frame rates of movie film and a camcorder could cause annoying flickering of the final image. Send your movies to a commercial transfer service like Audio Video Memories (audiovideomemories.com), Digital Transfer Systems (digitaltransfersystems.net), and Just8mm.com that uses a telecine machine, a much more sophisticated version of the same home technique.
Movies arrive back on DVDs, ready to be imported into the PC for editing with a program like Apple's iMovie ($79, part of iLife '08) for Macs, or for PCs, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 ($100).
VHS TAPES To transfer VHS footage, which is analog, into a computer, the PC needs to receive the data digitally. One way to check if your PC is so equipped to do that is to look at the computer's ports. If it has the familiar RCA inputs — the yellow, white, and red connectors — then it most likely is analog ready.
If not, analog images must first be converted to the digital format. To do so, combination VHS/DVD player/recorders are one of the simplest ways to get your home movies off your aging video tapes and onto more permanent DVDs. Available from Panasonic, Sony and others, prices start at under $200.
Alternatively, connect a stand-alone VHS player to a DVD recorder to make a digital copy.
VHS tapes can also be recorded onto a computer's hard drive by plugging the VCR's output cable into a digital camcorder that offers a "pass through" mode (most do). The signal is digitized within the camcorder, and then passed on to the PC's hard drive.
Sony's $229 VRD-MC5 is specifically made to record DVD copies of VHS tapes, or recordings from any camcorder or digital video recorder, without using a PC. VCRs and camcorders are plugged into the device, which resembles a portable DVD deck.
If you do not own a camcorder or DVD recorder, but you have loads of valuable tapes, consider an intermediary conversion product, such as the DAC-200 ($184; synchrotech.com); Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge ($300; omegamultimedia.com), and VHS to DVD 3.0 ($80; honestech.com). Each product includes hardware and software that converts analog signals to digital,.
LPS, EIGHT-TRACKS, AND CASSETTES Getting your old Country Joe and the Fish albums into your PC is one of the easiest conversions to do, according to Tom Merritt, executive editor of CNetTV.com.
Assuming you still have a phonograph turntable (or eight-track or cassette deck) and it is not the console type from the 1950s or earlier, plug the audio output from the turntable's amplifier/receiver into the minimike port found on virtually all home computers.
While commercial audio editing software is available, Mr. Merritt recommends installing Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net), a free program available for Macs, PCs and Linux/Unix machines that will manage the files, convert them into a specific format (for example, WAV or MP3), and remove clicks and crackles.
For those who value their time more than the fun of connecting cables and reading manuals, there are plenty of commercial companies happy to do the converting for you. Cassettes2CDs.com will convert audio and video tapes, LPs and 45s to digital format, storing the data on a CD, DVD or MP3 format for iPod use. The company does not handle 78 r.p.m. records, reel-to-reel or eight-track tapes.
If the thought of gathering up boxes full of photographs or phonograph records to digitize is daunting, here is one other compelling thought: your treasured memories will be in a digital format that can still be easily converted to the next video and audio formats that will invariably show up in the coming years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/technology/circuits/16basics.html?pagewanted=print
null
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/technology/16Basics_AudioLink.mp3
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)