Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > July
July 2010
HeliOS Project’s Ken Starks profiled in the American-Statesman
Photo by James Brosher / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
We’ve written about Ken Starks of Austin’s HeliOS Project several times in Digital Savant over the last few years.
In Sunday’s American-Statesman, Starks is featured on the front page in a profile piece I’ve been wanting to write for quite a while.
As is evidenced by what people say about him in the story, Ken’s work in the community to get laptop and desktop computers into the hands of the city’s poorest children, community centers and non-profits has earned him many admirers.
Here’s a link to the New York Times piece we mention in the story about whether computers in the home correlate to better performance in school, and a shorter related piece, also from the Times.
Lastly, Ken and his partner in Linux Against Poverty, Lynn Bender of GeekAustin, were also quoted in a story I wrote last month about cell phones and the digital divide.
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The Linkdown for Wednesday, July 28
So many events and other bits of tech news coming up! Here are a few of them:
- The Lights, Camera, Help non-profit Film Festival is happening this weekend, led by Statesman Texas Social Media Award winner David Neff.
- Also happening this weekend in the social media world: the kickoff party for Cause2Celebrate. It’s at noon on Sunday.
- And next week, on Aug. 7? ProductCamp Austin. Working on a separate story about that.
- On NPR’s All Tech Considered this week, I talked about e-mail in the cloud, provided to government agencies and cities by companies like Microsoft and Google.
- More self-pimping: “There’s a Creator For That” feature on Austin-developed TabbedOut app.
- Dell Inc. settled its SEC problems with a $100 million payment.
- The third season of “Lineage,” the popular MMO, launches tomorrow.
- “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style books are coming to the iPhone and iPad soon from one of the original writers.
- “Street Fighter” and “Tekken” characters will battle each other in two separate games from Capcom and Namco (and pictured above).
- Digital media researchers at UT will be working with Portuguese universities on a variety of projects.
- U-verse has introduced a “Multiview” service, allowing you to watch multiple channels at the same time. Check out a video demo here.
- Uh oh, Kanye West has joined Twitter. Hide your Taylor Swifts!
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And then Apple came out with this thing
You know that Apple is getting far to large when the introduction of a brand new, never-before-seen product is not met with a huge press conference and tons of attention. Instead, quietly, this thing was released to the Apple Store yesterday:
It’s called the Magic Trackpad and costs $69. It works like the trackpad on a MacBook, but via BlueTooth, bringing wireless touch gestures to your Mac or PC. It looks a lot like a cutting blade utensil that came with a wok set I used heavily back when I was a bachelor. I wonder if this thing is as good at cutting a frozen cutlet of chicken.
In any case, Apple says, “You’re welcome.”
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Dell’s Streak smart phone is $299 with contract, pre-sale ends soon
Dell Inc.’s 5-inch-screen little beast the Streak (don’t worry, it’s safe for work; no nudity involved) is being pre-sold right now on Dell’s Web site, but today (Tuesday) is the last day of the pre-sale offer. According to a post from Engadget (which itself was using info from a Dell blog that’s since been pulled), the Android-based phone/Internet device will cost $299 with a two-year AT&T contract, $549 without. It should be launching very soon (like within a week or two, we’re guessing).
What’s the Streak? It’s what we saw at South by Southwest Interactive in March, back when it was still called the Dell Mini 5:
There’s also word that a $99 phone called the Dell Aero will be available on Aug. 9. That’s $99 with a contract. Without, it’s $249.
The summer of smart phones just got a little more interesting.
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My shattered iPhone screen: fixed on the cheap
After my tragic cracking Saturday of my iPhone 3GS screen, I didn’t panic too much because I know that cracked iPhone screens are fairly common and I’d already seen advertisements for places in Austin that can replace a broken screen.
Apple can do this for you, of course, but I’ve heard that depending on the model and damage, it can cost up to about $150 to replace a broken screen, which may be more than the phone itself is worth to you.
Instead, I took my phone to All Cell Repair, basic simply on proximity — it’s just down the street from my work and I was able to drop it off and pick it up the same day. The price I was quoted was $75.
Less than an hour later, I got a call that my phone was ready. I picked it up and was told that the screen they used was the last one in stock and that while it was being applied, a tiny scratch had appeared below the active screen (just to the right of the Home button). I could barely see the scratch and told the salesperson that I was fine with that. They knocked off $15 on the price for that and my grand total for repair came to $64.95.
The screen looks new otherwise. The only thing I’ve noticed since the repair is that the Home button seems to be less responsive. I have to press it a little harder to get it to work. That may have to do with taking the phone apart, but if that’s the only trade-off for having a phone that doesn’t look like an unlucky person’s hand mirror, I’m all right with that.
All Cell isn’t the only place in town that does repairs of smart phone screens for under $100. A Google search yielded stores like Austin Mac Repair, All Wireless Repair, Cell Repair of Austin, and iTech Electronic Repair, among others.
Someone on Twitter also pointed me out to an online coupon for Aus-Tex that brings the price down to $48-$58 for an iPhone 3G or 3GS screen replacement. Thanks, Jordan!
Have you had any experiences with broken phone screens? Tell us about it in the comments.
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‘StarCraft II’ finally arrives among new video game releases
New video game releases this week:
“Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty” — You might almost forget what this game is if you’ve seen the jaw-dropping, cinematic commercial for Blizzard Entertainment’s long awaited sequel to its legendary 1998 real-time strategy game, which is something like a national sport in countries like South Korea. While the computer animation phenomenal, the game mechanics are similar to the original hit: three species duking it out on maps, but with much prettier graphics and, presumably, more robust online and single-player missions. “StarCraft II” is being split into three separate games. “Wings of Liberty” is the first. Rated T for Teen. $60-$100 for Standard or Collector’s Edition, for Windows PCs and Mac.
“BlazBlue: Continuum Shift” — The latest edition of this fighting game series includes multiple fighting styles, “Drive attacks” for each character and other features like Barriers, Counter Assaults, Rapid Cancels and Distortion Drives. It’s also playable online with Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. Rated T for Teen. $40, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Also out this week: “Arc Rise Fantasia” (Nintendo Wii), “Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar” (Nintendo DS), “Clash of the Titans” (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360), “Wolfschanze 2” (Windows PC), “Chuck E Cheese’s Party Games” (Wii), “Our House” (DS), “I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover” (DS), “Jekyll and Hyde” (PC), “Little Bears” (DS), “Galaxy Racers” (DS), “Girls Only” (DS), “Lost Secrets: Vatican Mysteries” (PC).
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‘Intergalactic Nemesis’ show pushing social media, location apps
Yesterday, the producers of the show unveiled a trip on location-based social media service Gowalla related to characters and plot points of the show.
The “Live-Action Gowalla Trip Spectacular Challenge” launched Sunday and features nine locations. Those who check in at all the locations will be eligible for a $300 prize package. The producers also promise that other giveaways will happen at trip locations and will be awarded to those who check in and include “The Intergalactic Nemesis” in their post. Locations include The Highball, Dragon’s Lair Comics and Fantasy, and Delish.
I’ve had trouble accessing the trip or the Intergalactic Nemesis Gowalla account through search, but you can get to the account and the trip directly via these links. Adding the account as a friend will add the Challenge to your list of trips.
This is in addition to an e-mail campaign contest that ended earlier this month, encouraging people to forward a message to their friends encouraging them to buy tickets for the show.
The show itself, “The Intergalactic Nemesis Live-Action Graphic Novel” has its premiere Sept. 3 and 4 at the Long Center. There’s an actual comic book that goes with the show and that you can buy on the Web site. An e-book version will be available through Graphic.ly on several platforms soon.
(Full disclosure: a close friend of mine, Mical Trejo, is part of the cast of the show. He wasn’t in the case when I saw a version of the show a few years ago.)
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The tragic cracking
So, on Saturday, this happened to my iPhone 3GS:
Totally my fault. I was changing clothes in my bathroom and as I was taking the phone out of my pocket, it slipped from my hand and landed face down, hard, on the tile floor. I heard the crack and it did not sound good.
While it’s always tempting to think, “Now I can upgrade!” in a situation like this, it turns out there are lots of places in Austin that will fix the cracked glass on a smart phone for under $100. The phone works fine otherwise. I can even still use it if I’m willing to risk cutting my finger while running it across broken glass.
I’m planning to get the glass fixed today or tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Typing fast with Swype
I’d seen a few news mentions and videos related to Swype, software that speeds up text input on a mobile device, but given that it’s not available for iPhone, or even on some Android phones yet, I didn’t pay a lot of attention.
But last night, at a Twitter Happy Hour, a friend handed me her new Samsung phone and told me to try it.
Well, wow.
After just a few minutes moving my fingers around the on-screen keyboard, I was totally sold. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the software is outstanding. Instead of tapping on keys, you move your finger from letter to letter and the software either predicts what you’re typing or gives you options for the right word. Most of the time, though, I find it gets the word you want without any additional input, even if you move your finger very quickly. It’s less clunky than it sounds and the software is much better at finding the right word than, say, the iPhone’s often abysmal Autocorrect feature. There’s also easy ways to capitalize letters and to incorporate punctuation.
I went home and discovered, to my delight, that a Droid X phone I’m testing out already has Swype installed. I’ve been playing with it all day. Going through the tutorial gave me flashbacks to learning the old Palm Graffiti language.
Now, will it ever appear as a keyboard option on the iPhone? We can only hope.
Video below: a typing comparison between Swype and the iPhone keyboard, courtesy of TechCrunch:
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There’s an app for iPhone 4’s free bumper program
As many news outlets are reporting this morning, Apple has released a new app for iPhone owners who want to order their free plastic case (or “bumper”) to address signal loss issues.
As Steve Jobs announced a week ago, Apple is giving away the bumpers to all iPhone 4 customers through September. It sounds as if not all colors of the bumper area available, but Apple is also offering some third-party cases through the app. The company is also offering refunds to those who already purchased a bumper.
More details here on what you need to do if you need a bumper or refund.
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The Linkdown for Thursday, July 22
Links to make your Friday get here even faster:
- We’re already excited about Fantastic Fest’s Fantastic Arcade in September. Now there’s going to be a 48-hour Machinima contest? Nice!
- Did you know seniors with hearing loss can get a free phone through the Texas Specialized Telecommunications Assistance Program? Here’s the link.
- The Dell Streak, a 5-inch Android-based phone / Internet device we saw at SXSW Interactive, looks like it’s very close to launching.
- Registration for Innotech Austin, which takes place on Oct. 28., has opened.
- Digital sales of video games have hit the same level as in-store sales, says NPD Group.
- The MOG music app for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android has launched. You can see a video demo here.
- Gowalla and Livestrong’s Chalkbot at the Tour de France.
- State tech fund drying up?
- Boocoo auctions, which is partnered by our parent company Cox Newspapers, is doing some two-hour charity auctions featuring tech items like iPhone 4s and the new Xbox 360 model. They start Sunday
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‘Flipboard’ for iPad: overhyped, yet still hot
The hype cycle for smart phones, mobile apps and anything to do with Apple continues to get shorter.
After 25 minutes Tuesday night, I was already sick of hearing about “Flipboard,” a new app for the iPad. The app was revealed by tech evangelist Robert Scoble, the P.T. Barnum of technology (or perhaps he’s our Michael Bay). After teasing followers for several days that a new, revolutionary social reading app was on its way.
At about 11 p.m., “Flipboard” was revealed with a video featuring the CEO of Flipboard, Inc. (embedded below). Within minutes, Twitter reverberated with Tweets hailing the app as game-changing and revolutionary. (Never mind that most of those posting hadn’t even seen the app yet for themselves).
So what is “Flipboard?” It’s an app that takes news feeds from blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable, photo blogs, or posts on Twitter and Facebook, and turns them into lovely pages laid out in the style of a magazine.
Photo pages look gorgeous on it, but even pages of text-only Tweets are laid out neatly and with lots of white space. If your friends post photos to Twitter or videos and news stories to Facebook, those get rolled into the mix, too, taking on the appearance of a newspaper or magazine with embedded multimedia.
Unfortunately, last night, it was nearly impossible to get the app to connect to Twitter or Facebook after Scoble and the Wall Street Journal posted about “Flipboard,” sending the hype off the charts.
The rush of traffic, which the company unwisely didn’t anticipate, has caused them to move to an invitation-only system for now. That’s too bad.
Because while I hope to feed into the hype that’s driving this particular rush of interest, I think the app is beautifully designed and the first step toward some really innovate ways to read the news and glance at your social networks on the iPad.
Unfortunately, it’s got some major limitations in this first incarnation. You can only set up nine feeds, which feels very cramped once you realize how fun “Flipboard” is to use. You can’t draw in RSS feeds, only Twitter lists and pre-built feeds from Flipboard like photo and tech sources they’ve configured.
And, the biggest problem to my mind, is that there’s no real heirarchy over what’s important and worth your attention. The reason newspapers and magazines have editors and designers is to judge newsworthiness and help decide what’s worth the reader’s time. Though the pages “Flipboard” produces are lovely, there doesn’t seem to be any real rhyme or reason to how content is displayed. An ugly Twitpic seems to have more weight than a very newsy Tweet in the same feed and the software has no way of knowing which is more important.
That being said, I think if “Flipboard” is very careful about the sources it provides and finds ways to lets its users filter content or scope out keyboards, it could be incredibly powerful.
That said, the minimalist design suggests to me that “Flipboard” is more about discovery and good design than about providing a kitchen-sink set of tools like “TweetDeck.” We’ll just have to see how it evolves.
Is it the future of reading on the iPad? I have to believe that other developers are working on similar products. But I think it’s a very nice app, and given that it’s free, it’s one that every iPad owner should test drive. You can find it here. When the hype dies down a bit, maybe it’ll be available for everyone.
Below: some screengrabs I captured while playing with “Flipboard” this morning.
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‘Need for Speed World’ races online this week
New video game releases this week:
“Need for Speed World” — While the massively multiplayer online version of this long-running racing franchise officially debuts next week, a “Head Start” event begins today for those who do a $20 pre-order. Getting in early gives you bonus experience points, a virtual Toyota Corolla AE86 and VIP Driver profile status. The free-to-play game will charge for items like cars and speed boosts. Rated E-10+ for Everyone 10 and older, for Windows PC.
Also out this week: “Limbo” (downloadable for Xbox 360), “Samantha Swift DS Collection” (Nintendo DS), “TrackMania” (Nintendo Wii), “TrackMania Turbo” (DS), “Dark Star One: Broken Alliance” (Xbox 360), “Little League World Series 2010” (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), “Little League World Series Double Play” (Wii, DS), “Lionheart: King”s Crusade” (PC), “Animal Planet: Vet Collection” (DS), “Galactic Taz Ball” (DS), “Puzzle Expedition” (PC).
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So long, Nexus One
Perhaps tellingly, Google only posted a short blog about it, on the same day as Apple’s big iPhone 4 press conference. That’s pretty stealthy.
Google’s phone was plagued by criticism of the company’s online-only sales gambit, which didn’t include the hands-on, in-store experience many phone customers expect. It was not a particularly hot seller upon its introduction.
In only six months, faster, more powerful Android-based phones like the Droid X, Evo 4G and the Droid Incredible have entered the market.
The Nexus One joins Microsoft’s line of Kin phones as a recent addition to the digital scrap heap.
Nexus One, we’ll see you at the Crossroad.
(Photo by Jeff Chiu, Associated Press)
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iPhone 4 buyer? You get a free bumper, says Jobs
Apple’s Steve Jobs today addressed the bloated iPhone 4 antenna chatter, which had grown to epic, international proportions fueled in equal parts by consumer outrage and sketchy rumormongering by even non-owners of the phone.
Jobs, of course, downplayed the problem, but this time he brought some facts and figures to support his case in a press conference. Jobs said that Apple has received just over one half of one percent of owners have called Apple to complain antenna problems and that Apple has had fewer returns on it than they had with the previous generation, the iPhone 3GS. He also took some shots at the competition by including tests he said Apple has done on other phones, which he says suffer the same problem.
Nevertheless, he offered a full refund to unsatisfied customers through the end of September and free plastic bumpers (like the one pictured above) to all iPhone 4 owners. Those who’ve already bought the $29 plastic cases will get a refund. He also added that the white version of the iPhone 4 will be out at the end of July.
To date 3 million iPhone 4s have been sold. 1.7 percent of them have been returned, Jobs said in the press conference.
So what now? Will Jobs’ response be enough to satisfy those who were calling for a full recall of the iPhone 4? How will Consumer Reports, which in my view and the view of others has had its reputation tainted worse than Apple since the launch, respond?
What do you think?
Incidentally, here are the results of an informal poll I did an hour before Jobs did his press conference:
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Your Droid X questions answered (on video)
Today, Verizon Wireless unveiled the Droid X, a phone with similar (but not exact specs) of Sprint’s recent hotness, the Sprint EVO 4G (which is still on back-order at many stores).
Like the EVO, it has a large 4.3-inch screen, runs Android’s 2.1 software and shoots HD video. It, however, doesn’t have a forward-facing camera or surf on any 4G networks.
It costs $199 (with the usual two-year contract) and is made by Motorola.
This has been the summer of smart phones and with Apple’s moment of truth tomorrow over the iPhone 4’s reception issues, many are looking for alternatives. The Droid X, on paper at least, would seem to be a contender. We have a review unit I’ll be trying out and will write more about it later.
I asked Twitter and Facebook users to send me questions about the phone and Verizon’s Jason Rogers answers the ones we got in the video below.
The video here, incidentally, was shot on an iPhone 4. I asked Jason if he wouldn’t be too offended by that and he seemed to take it in stride.
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AllNiterProject aims to create an app Friday night
Austin’s AppRanch is putting together an event Friday night in the hopes that it’ll bring together enough talent to develop an app in 12 hours.
“AllNiterProject” will happen at 10 p.m. Friday night at Cospace coworking with the goal of creating an app good enough to be sold on Apple’s App Store platform.
Jei Gaither said an in e-mail to me, “It should at the very least, be a fun, Austin-Style way to pull a productive, creative All-Nighter with Like-Minded Entrepreneurs and Freelancers to hopefully have an iPhone app ready to submit to Apple.”
Once the app — whatever it is — is submitted, it will belong to the team that created it, not AppRanch, according to Gaither. He says that in addition to an app, he hopes an independent new Austin start-up will be created and, depending on who shows up, they may use the time to also do a legal filing and trademark application at the event.
I guess that beats staying up all night and watching a “Mad Men” marathon on AMC.
If you want to skip the event but see the fruits of the team’s labor, a 10 a.m. Saturday “Lunch & Launch” will show off what the team was able to do in those 12 hours.
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Old Spice Man wins the Internet, pretty much
There’s savvy marketing and then there’s the atomic bomb of savvy marketing, which the folks at Old Spice unleashed today in what might be the best use of social media I’ve seen a company employ yet.
Taking off from the company’s popular “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercials (which were recently Emmy-nominated), actor Isaiah Mustafa and a brilliant writer or writers are now filming personalized videos and uploading them to YouTube.
For the last 24 hours or so, they’ve been replying to news articles, blog posts, Tweets, Facebook posts and even YouTube comments. A few dozen videos are listed on the YouTube Old Spice channel, but it seems many more are being produced that are not being publicly listed. They can be accessed if you know the URL.
One example is a video shot for my friend Linda Holmes, who wrote about the commercials for NPR’s Monkey See blog and then received a video response today from the Old Spice pitch man himself:
Old Spice Man has been making videos for “The Ellen Show,” Ryan Seacrest and “12755JDH,” among others.
The most meta moment? When Old Spice Man sent a video to the actor who plays him.
The best way to keep track of the constant output (which could end at any moment), you can see all the posts on the Twitter account linking to all the videos.
If there’s been a better, more well-executed and clever social media campaign on behalf of a brand, I’d like to know what it is.
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‘NCAA Football 11’ and ‘The Bachelor’ among new games this week
New video game releases available this week:
“NCAA Football 11” — Another year, another college football sim from EA Sports. This year’s edition boasts a new running mechanic (or “Locomotion System,” to use EA’s term for it); no-huddle spreads, triple options, wishbone, wild hog and pistol offenses; and a whole new ESPN broadcast interface featuring Kirk Herbstreit, Brad Nessler and Erin Andrews. Rated E for Everyone. $40-60, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2.
“The Bachelor: The Videogame” — At last! You can compete against other men or ladies (or “frenemies,” as the game calls them) to win the heart of bachelor or bachelorette. You can sabotage your opponents (drama!), who include real-life contestants from the show. The game includes personality tests and host Chris Harrison. Rated T for Teen. $30, for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.
Also out this week: “Chuck E. Cheese’s Party Games” (DS), “Will Calvin Tucker’s Redneck Racing” (Wii), “Our House: Party!” (Wii), “Hunting Unlimited 2011” (Windows PC), “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (DS), “Paws and Claws: Regal Resort” (DS), “River City Sports Challenge” (DS), “Cats and Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore” (DS), “DeathSpank” (downloadable for Xbox 360).
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The Linkdown for Monday, July 12
The Linkdown is in a state of panic caused by Consumer Reports reversing itself on its recommendation of the iPhone 4. Who knows what to believe now!?
Anyway, here are some links you should check out, whether you’re in a panic or not:
- Engadget confirms what Consumer Reports discovered and even helped develop an in-house app for reception testing.
- Coming to Austin this weekend: a big convention for Web hosting professionals.
- Best Buy is getting into the mobile wireless broadband game.
- Borders now has its own e-books store.
- The Peace Corps is asking for submissions for a YouTube video contest. Entries are due by Sept. 30. Yes, there are prizes.
- Austin’s Obsidian Software is offering a scholarship to attend the Microprocessor Test and Verification Conference later this year. Details here. Applications are due Oct. 1.
- What has Conjunctured Coworking been up to?
Find out in this blog post. - “Ride the City” iPhone app, with bike directions for Austin, is now available.
- Deadline is Friday to register for the one-day STEM Education Workshop for high school educators. It’s being put on by National Instruments.
- Release dates for the rebooted “NBA Jam” (for Nintendo Wii) and “NBA Elite 11” (for other consoles), both from Electronic Arts, have been announced. They’ll be out on Oct. 5.
- RJMetrics says it’s keeping a close eye on Foursquare and Gowalla by measuring locations and the number of users for each one on an hourly basis.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, Phones, Videogames
Mailbox: cell phone jamming at the Hilton? Not so much
Here’s an e-mail I got from a reader a few months ago that I’m just catching up with:
Charlie writes:
A while back, I was staying at the Hilton Austin and had trouble using my cell phone. I would have a strong signal for a while, then, suddenly, it would drop off. This made it necessary to use the pricey hotel phone service instead for my calls.
A few times, I noticed other people losing their cell phone signal at the same time I did. This makes me suspect that the hotel is intentionally jamming cell phone signals to boost their own phone service revenue. Is such a practice legal?
I noticed that they have Wi-Fi antennas spread throughout the hotel hallways. Could these being doing something else besides providing Wi-Fi service? Just curious.
I called the Hilton Austin and was told that it’s a common problem at hotels and the simple answer is “Concrete.”
I follows up with Joe Bolash, a resident manager at the hotel, who wrote in an e-mail:
“…Our building has the same issues with cell phone coverage common to many high rise structures. The Hilton Austin does not use any type of jamming device nor would we ever intentionally interfere with a cell phone carrier’s signal in our hotel.
If you’ve ever been in the basement of some older stores or campus buildings (or in the middle of my newsroom), cell and data signals can drop quite a bit. I imagine this is a bigger problem the further into the structure you are.
Got any questions like this you’d like me to answer for you? Drop me a line at ogallaga (at) statesman.com.
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Digital divide follow-up: cell phones and mobile Internet use keep growing
A few days after we reported on the mobile Web use of teen minorities and low-income families (bonus material here), the Pew Internet & American Life Research Project has released updated data on these trends.
As we said in the story, a Pew research we spoke to, Aaron Smith, had told us that many of things that were appearing in 2009 research — like an increased reliance on mobile phones as a way to get online among teens — continue.
Some bits are not that surprising. 59 percent of respondents to Pew’s survey say they’ve gone online wireless, but that includes accessing the Internet with a laptop via Wi-Fi. However, the rate of growth is remarkable. The number shot up from 51 percent last year to 59 percent in May of 2010. And the variety of applications people use on cell phones is also increasing. Taking photos, accessing the Internet and taking photos using cell phones are all increasingly popular activities, but in the case of recording video with a cell phone, the percentage of people jumped from 19 percent to 34 percent in one year.
As far as Latinos and African Americans, Pew says:
“Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64 percent) and Latinos (63 percent) are wireless Internet users, and minority Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than their white counterparts (87 percent of blacks and Hispanics own a cell phone, compared with 80 percent of whites). Additionally, black and Latino cell phone owners take advantage of a much wider array of their phones’ data functions compared to white cell phone owners. It is important to note that our data for Hispanics represents English-speaking Hispanics only, as our survey did not provide a Spanish-language option.”
Pew also found that 18 percent of African Americans and 16 percent of English-speaking Latinos are cell-only wireless users, compared to 10 percent of whites. 17 percent of respondents earning $30,000 or less a year are cell-only.
Among young people, nine out of 10 18-29 year-olds own a cell phone. Among that age group, 95 percent send or receive texts, 93 percent take photos with their phone and 65 percent access the Internet on their phone.
One bit of nice news: 19 percent of the 18-29 year-olds surveyed have used their phone to make a charitable donation by text.
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Gowalla updates, adds BlackBerry app and reports 350,000 users
The screengrab above doesn’t really do it justice, but the Gowalla app for iPhone has been updated to make it compatible with the iPhone 4’s new Retina Display. The result? Some very nice eye candy, especially on Gowalla’s pins and stamps. The higher-res display brings out some nice detail and all the text and mapping in the app looks much nicer. Some older pins (like ones related to SXSW Interactive) look a little jagged around the edges, but the ones that take advantage fo the new display really pop.
The update also is said to improve location detection (which seems to have been a problem lately), adds multitasking (tracking locations in the background) and fast-app switching. It also adds French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Arabic languages to the app.
Outside of the iPhone universe, Gowalla’s Android app now includes search, photos and commends, and an updated design.
But perhaps the biggest addition it a dedicated BlackBerry app that debuted last month. Mutual Mobile, an Austin company, helped develop the app, which is currently out in a beta version.
In an e-mail update today, the company said it now has 350,000 users (or as they call them, “Passport holders”).
After getting lots of attention at South by Southwest Interactive, Gowalla has been releasing frequent app updates, has released an iPad version and has been putting together deals with media companies, including the American-Statesman.
More on the subject: our three-part blog series on how to use Gowalla and Foursquare.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, SXSW 2010
‘Crackdown 2’ and new ‘Dragon Quest’ among new video games
New video games released this week:
“Crackdown 2” — The original “Crackdown” was a sandbox game like “Grand Theft Auto 3,” but it turned out to have more action and crime-fighting thrills than you might have expected. The sequel continues in that open-world vein with more co-op and multiplayer modes, a larger city to explore and ways to combine gadgets to maximize your mayhem. Rated M for Mature. $60, for Xbox 360.
“Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky” — The latest edition of the turn-based role-playing game is the first to be designed first for a portable console. It also allows for four players to team up over a wireless connection. Also on offer: extra downloadable quests. Rated E-10+ for Everyone 10 and Older. $35, for Nintendo DS.
Also out this week: “Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck”s Revenge” (download-only for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable” (Sony PSP), “Mahjong: Journey Quest for Tikal” (DS), “Titanic Mysteries” (DS, Nintendo Wii), “Big Beach Sports 2” (Wii), “The Cages: Pro Style Batting Practice” (Wii), “Despicable Me: The Game - Minion Mayhem” (DS, Wii, PSP, PlayStation 2), “Nursery Mania” (DS), “Tournament of Legends” (Wii).
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Shopping, Videogames
The digital divide and cell phones: deleted scenes
As I mentioned in the last blog entry, today’s American-Statesman story on the digital divide, teens and cell phones (which ran on A1), took a while to put together and was the product of lots of information from a variety of good sources.
But even at that length of a story, with graphics and a sidebar box, there was still lots of information we just couldn’t fit into the story. Here are some stray bits and pieces from my notes, e-mails and other sources that I think you might find interesting.
- Luis Rivera, a 14-year-old who attended Ojeda Middle School, wrote me in an e-mail, “I have the HTC HD 2 with T-Mobile and yes I use it to access the Internet. I mostly use it for YouTube and Facebook. Yes, I do have a laptop and fast Internet in it but i do use my phone’s Internet more than the one in my laptop.”
- Gus West, board chair of The Hispanic Institute said, “In the Hispanic community, the mobile phone is more than just a way to make calls. For more than half the population, wireless devices are increasingly a link to education, opportunity and everything else the Internet offers. This mobile adoption is crucial to ensure that all Americans benefit from rapidly evolving communications opportunities.”
- In the story, we speak to Ken Starks and Lynn Bender who collaborated on the recent Linux Against Poverty event. They had a lot more to say about the digital divide and computers, more than we could fit into this story, but I’m working on a follow-up story that will address this. It should run in late July or August.
- “Assessing the cell phone challenges,” one of the more recent Pew Research surveys. A new report from Pew should be out soon updating the 2009 data.
- AT&T sent me information about a program called “Access All,” launched in 2006. According to AT&T, Austin Habitat for Humanity received resources to benefit 76 families with a package that included Dell Dimension computers and DSL or dial-up Internet access.
- A Nielsen report (via Norton) on family Internet usage, dated June 2010. (Warning: PDF file.)
- More on pre-paid wireless and the big telecom companies, from the Wall Street Journal.
- A Future of the Internet report has different data than Gartner and suggests mobile will be the dominant way to access the Internet by 2020, not 2013. They don’t disagree that it’ll happen eventually.
- From my interview with S. Craig Watkins: “Everything is negotiated via their cell phone. The mobile phone offers a more autonomous experience. If they go online at school, there’s all these restrictions about content they can and can’t access. They might blog access to Facebook, to YouTube or Twitter. Even in libraries or technology centers, there are time restrictions. (With a cell phone) there’s a source of empowerment, a sense of freedom. They get a great degree of satisfaction from that.”
- Watkins also said that he’s been visiting many schools for his next book and is optimistic that their attitudes toward technology is changing for the better. Still, “There is a huge disconnect. We have 21st-century students walking into 20th-century classrooms. The conflict is becoming more and more pronounced.”
- Aaron Smith, a research specialist at the Pew Research Center: “The gap between white and African Americans is fairly pronounced at access using desktop machines. When you include broader measures including cell phones and handheld devices, the gap is noticeably smaller.” He said African Americans and Hispanics are, “More likely to check e-mail, more likely to play games and access the Internet” through a cell phone.
- Jeff Snodgrass, Austin District Manager at Verizon: “These phones, they become people’s administrators. They become your right arm, all the way from soccer moms to CEOs. We make our customer’s lives much easier.” He said pre-paid wireless is especially popular among college students in Austin and San Marcos.
- Juanita Esquivel, the mother of Jared I interviewed in the story, said that her son goes to a primarily Hispanic and African American school where most of the kids have cell phones. Her 13-year-old daughter, however, went to a school with more white students. “She hangs out mostly with white kids and a lot of them don’t have (cell) phones,” Juanita said.
Comments or questions about the story? Please post them in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Phones
Digital divide, minority teens and cell phones
Update: the story has been published online.
Original entry: In Sunday’s Austin American-Statesman, I’ve got a story scheduled to run that I’ve been working on for a quite a while. It’s about the migration of teens (especially in minority and low-income homes) from computers and laptops to accessing the Internet primarily on their cell phones.
We all know that cell phones, and now smart phones, are quickly changing the way we communicate, connect with the Web and, now, access hundreds of thousands of applications.
But in homes where a decent high-speed Internet connection may be missing or service may be intermittent, this becomes a much more important issue. What happens when a cell phone is your primary way to access to the Internet? Are teens missing out on the full Internet experience and what are other disadvantages these young people face?
I’ll post a link here as soon as the story is posted, as well as some additional information that didn’t make it into the story. The months I worked on the story yielded at least 100 pages of notes, articles and online information; of course, not all of it fit into even a length article.
I was the editor of¡ahora sí!, the Spanish-language newspaper published by our parent company, several years ago, so the subject is very personal for me and I hope I’m providing a fair glimpse into the subject.
The jumping off point for the story was some recent and ongoing research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Pew Hispanic Center.
The Hispanic Institute is also looking closely into mobile Internet and Latinos and the work of University of Texas associate professor S. Craig Watkins (the author of “The Young and the Digital”) was also invaluable. He took the time to talk with us and explain his research and what the implications are for the next few years as we continue this transition to a mobile-dominant Internet.
I’m excited and nervous for you to read it, but much more than that, I’m hopeful that it’ll start some conversations in Austin about how wide the wireless digital divide is and what we can do to make sure all Central Texas children have access to the right kinds of technology and nurturing guidance from their parents, educators and community, who are themselves learning to live with incredibly rapid change.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Computers, Internet, Phones
Multi-room DVR streaming action
When we built our home in late 2004, I had a home theater guy come out and do all the wiring. He added a few power outlets, wired most of the rooms for Ethernet and ran speaker wire for in-ceiling speakers and for our patio (which we never ended up using).
One of the big mistakes I made, besides not putting Ethernet connections in all the bedrooms, was to let a mistake pass: in the living room, where so many of our A/V connections would be, he put in a phone jack instead of an Ethernet jack. We’ve only had a home phone for one of the five years we’ve lived in our house and that stupid little port has caused me grief ever since.
At the time, I didn’t think it was a big deal. At the time, Wi-Fi was an exciting, wonderful new technology. I was convinced that in two or three years, nobody would even need Ethernet cable or connections anymore. I began to think that even wiring the home for Ethernet might have been an unnecessary expense.
Now it’s 2010 and wireless has gotten faster and better, but it’s still not perfect, especially now that HD video is involved.
For the last few years, I’ve been using various wireless bridges to get my Xbox 360 online in my living room (our wireless-N router is upstairs in the home office), and to get our two DirecTV DVR boxes online. This allows the DVRs to download video on demand programming, do some light Web widgets (which are so clunky I don’t really use them) and to stream DVR recordings to my PC upstairs using software called DirecTV2PC.
That’s when things started becoming a problem. Watching recordings upstairs was fine in standard definition, but high-definition shows were unwatchable. They stuttered and stopped. The wireless connection wasn’t fast enough to transmit the video and audio and as more HD channels rolled out and more of our DVR recordings were HD, it became pretty unusable.
My router is wireless-N and the Ethernet bridge I was using in my living room, a wireless-N Apple Airport Express, still weren’t fast enough. My router is set to mixed mode, however — it doesn’t push out the fastest form of wireless-N because to set it that way would disable Wi-Fi devices in the home that use wireless-G or wireless-B (like our Nintendo Wii, for instance). I could buy a dual-band wireless-N router that might solve the problem, but it was still no guarantee I’d get speeds fast enough for HD video and would require more setup than my lazy self was willing to experiment with.
The other problem in our home was that with two DVRs (living room, master bedroom), we were always recording stuff on one DVR and then finding that we couldn’t watch it in the other room. I ended up wasting hard drive space double-recording many programs on both DVRs since I was never sure whether we’d be watching shows in the living room or in bed at night. It was particularly frustrating that I could stream recordings to a PC, but not from one DVR to the other.
Then, this summer DirecTV rolled out Whole Home DVR, a feature similar to what U-verse offers. With one DVR (and some separate non-DVR receivers) you can watch recordings in any room.
I was less interested in that than in the ability to link up the two DVRs and combine my DVR playlist, watching them from either room. I signed up for the $3-a-month service and tried it out.
Stuttering. Stopping. The wireless network was again too slow.
I called DirecTV and they told me it would cost $150 for a technician to come out and install special hardware that would link up the DVRs on their own little network over the existing satellite cabling and assure speeds fast enough to make the streaming work.
Unfortunately, while the DVRs would be all set up, it wouldn’t do anything for any Blu-ray players, the Xbox or other devices that could use a wired connection in our home theater.
I decided instead to buy some powerline adapters instead. I’d had luck with a set of adapters I’d tried out a few years ago. I shopped on Amazon and found some Netgear adapters that included a base station (which plugs in upstairs to our router) and a four-port switch adapter that would go in our living room cabinet.
I bought an extra four-port adapter for our bedroom. The whole set-up cost a little over $200.
A few days later, the gear arrived and I plugged the adapters directly into power outlets (and not into any power strips, per the instructions). The adapters found each other, transmitting data through our home’s electrical wiring.
And… it worked! Once I had both DVRs connected, they recognized each other and our programs merged into one long playlist. Programs are marked “LIVING ROOM” or “MASTER BEDROOM” and although there’s a small delay as a program loads from another room, the video looks great and there’s no more stuttering.
Occasionally one of the DVRs will drop from the network, then return quickly. I’ve noticed that the bedroom adapter seems to have a slower connection than the living room (based on indicator lights on the adapters), but the speeds haven’t dropped enough to affect viewing HD video. I haven’t hooked up any computers to test speeds (frankly, I’m afraid to mess with it now that everything is working). The Xbox recognized the network instantly with no set-up, as did the DVRs and our Blu-ray player.
Netflix streaming on the Xbox and Blu-ray player work fine, too.
It’s not the perfect solution. It’s not even the most elegant solution — there’s still cables and adapters I have to keep hidden from view. But it worked for about the same price I would have paid DirecTV to install a less useful solution.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Gadgets, Movies & DVDs, Shopping, TV
Amazon is buying Woot
Almost a year after Amazon purchased online shoe emporium Zappos.com, the retail giant is purchasing Woot.com, a quirky sales site that unloads good through flash sales, one item at a time. No terms of the deal were announced, but when Amazon acquired Zappos, it was said to have been an $800-$900 million deal.
(More details here in the AP story.)
It seems Woot celebrated by offering two pretty great deals yesterday: it sold 8 GB iPod Nanos (the ones that can shoot video) for $99 yesterday (about $50 cheaper than you could get them on the Apple Store) and followed that up with a $149 Amazon Kindle deal, the cheapest I’ve ever seen the e-book reader for sale (it has since sold out). The price on the Kindle recently dropped to $189.
Woot did a funny audio bit and posted a box on its home page with the headilne, “Amazon buys world’s biggest bag o’ crap and it’s called Woot.” In recent years, the site has expanded to kids, shirts and other specialized areas as well as a community area where people can sell their own goods.
Like Zappos, Woot has a quirky culture and has gained lots of goodwill on the Web for its content and vibe. Seems like a smart move for Amazon.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, Shopping
