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October 11 The Mac Guy: iWork '08 offers sweet office suiteWeb Posted: 10/06/2007 09:00 AM CDTSan Antonio Express-News Apple announced the latest version of their office suite, iWork '08, in August. This package now consists of three applications useful in a general business environment: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. I have installed iWork '08, and here is the rundown of the new features.This is the third version of iWork, originally released in 2005, and the suite has matured nicely, becoming an alternative to the likes of Microsoft Office or NeoOffice. Benefiting from Apple's tireless design and integration efforts, iWork '08 gives users an easy, intuitive interface, beautiful templates and tight integration with Mac OS X and iLife. The biggest feature in Pages '08 is the incorporation of a separate word-processing mode distinct from the standard page layout mode. This allows users to concentrate on their text without focusing on layout. Another great new feature is the contextually sensitive formatting bar; you get different formatting options if you have text selected than you do if you have an image or table selected. Pages '08 automatically can track changes by you or others working on a document. These are highlighted in the text and are represented as color-coded bubbles in the Comments pane. List formatting happens automatically in Pages. If you type a bullet or number at the beginning of a line, Pages will continue the formatting on the subsequent lines. There are new image editing tools in Pages. You easily can mask a photo to make the edges look torn or taped onto the page; you even can use the new Instant Alpha tool to remove the background of a photo. Like all automatic masking tools, there are some limitations; some photos will work better than others. And, of course, there are more Apple-designed templates for common documents such as newsletters, brochures, fliers and business cards. There are also new stationery sets that have complementary designs for letterhead, business cards, envelopes, invoices and fax cover sheets. Pages is turning into a very capable word-processing program, a quite viable alternative to Microsoft Word. You needn't sacrifice compatibility; Pages can read Word 2007 documents and export in Word format as well. Keynote '08 is the fourth version of Apple's presentation package, and Apple keeps making it better. You will find a lot more animation features this time around. Keynote '08 has a series of new animation and transition effects that will dazzle your audience. Build effects include "Comet," where a glowing ball flies across the page revealing your text, and "Flame," where your points burn onto the screen. These effects are stunning. Keynote also has new Smart Builds that let you drag-and-drop images into zones to achieve some very sophisticated effects. Keynote now supports recording a voiceover directly within the program. When you have your presentation complete, with one click you can you can send it to iDVD to burn a disc, to iTunes as a PDF or QuickTime movie for inclusion in a podcast or to present from your iPod, or export it to YouTube (www.youtube.com). If you don't have a YouTube account, Apple will walk you through the steps. As you would expect, there are new themes for Keynote as well, 36 in all. You no longer are limited to just one theme for your presentation. You can mix-and-match as desired. Keynote '08 also sports compatibility with Microsoft PowerPoint and the new PowerPoint 2007 format. The newest component in iWork '08 is the much-anticipated spreadsheet application, Numbers '08. Numbers is an easy program to use if you have used any other spreadsheet program. It is designed intelligently from the ground up. If you ever have had one of those experiences fumbling around trying to navigate workbooks and worksheets in a program like Microsoft Excel, Numbers '08 will seem brilliantly elegant. The program lets you have multiple tables on one page, and they do not have to be on the same grid. Apple calls them Intelligent Tables, and it's hard to argue. When you drag across multiple cells to select a range of data, Numbers shows you a summary of that data. You then can drag the summary buttons into cells to make calculations easily. You can turn a row or column into a header with one click. Then when you add a formula to a cell, it uses the header text to describe your data instead of cryptic numbers and letters. Numbers supports more than 150 calculations and logical operations, and they can be linked between tables on the same or different pages. It is also easy to change the formatting of your table. Each table displays handles when is selected that allow you to fluidly drag the table out to add more rows, columns or both. Adding pop-up menus, sliders and steppers to change the data of a cell is a one-click process. The interactive Print View lets you see how your spreadsheet is going to print, which parts may be off the page, and then fix them by moving and resizing elements with the aid of alignment guides. Like the Pages and Keynote, Numbers has the new image editing and masking tools as well as some attractive template styles for your data. Apple's iWork '08 is available now and costs $79. You will need a Mac with at least a 500MHz Power PC G4 or Intel processor, 512MB RAM, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.10 or higher, QuickTime 7.2 and a DVD drive. This suite is a worthy upgrade for previous users and for those tired of waiting for a new version of Microsoft Office. User Group Note: The MacApple Users of San Antonio will be meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Colonies House — 3511 Colony Drive. We'll be discussing iWork '08 and the iPhone. Check the group's Web site for details (www.macappleusers.org). Hope to see you there. August 14 Verbessern Sie Ihre Googleability
[Bild: google.ch]
dafür, dass Google und andere Suchmaschinen Sie auch wirklich finden? anthrazit gibt Tipps zur Verbesserung der eigenen Googleability.
[anthrazit.org] - Was machen Sie, wenn Sie auf einer Party oder in der Kantine jemanden kennenlernen? Sie surfen Google an und schauen nach, was die Suchmaschine über den Namen hergibt. Und zwar ganz egal, ob es sich bei dem Menschen um den neuen Sekretär im Büro gegenüber, Ihre neue Gärtnerin, einen Bewerber um die Stelle als Account Manager oder Ihre neue Chefin handelt. Ganz besonders schnell geht der Griff zu Google, wenn der Name aus einer E-Mail stammt, wenn Sie also eine Mail von jemandem erhalten haben, den Sie nicht kennen. Name markieren, copy, in den Browser wechseln, Name in das Suchfenster einfügen. Was dann herauskommt, nennt man die Googleability einer Person. Also die Fähigkeit, gegoogelt zu werden. Gerade im professionellen Umfeld sollte Google schon etwas ergeben zu einem Namen. Einen Gärtner zu engagieren, der über Google nicht zu finden ist, das überlegt man sich zweimal. Ganz zu schweigen vom potenziellen Account Manager. Wer heute von Google nicht gefunden wird, der existiert nicht. Umgekehrt gilt natürlich auch: Alles, was über Sie schon mal publiziert worden ist, lässt sich über Google in nullkommasoundso Sekunden finden. Den meisten Menschen macht das nichts aus, weil sie nichts zu verbergen haben. Was einem mit der Zeit etwas ausmachen könnte, ist, dass man nichts mehr verbergen kann. Egal, wie übel die Nachrede in einem Blog ist, wie falsch ein Gerücht oder wie offensichtlich eine Verwechslung – Google findet es. Und was Google findet, das ist wahr. So sehen es jedenfalls viele Menschen. Das Unheimliche dabei ist die Asymmetrie, die damit verbunden ist: Google kann Sie im Internet völlig ausziehen, Sie können nichts mehr geheim halten. Der Googler, derjenige, der über Google etwas über Sie herausfinden will, bleibt dabei aber völlig anonym und geht keinerlei Risiko ein. Googleability meint deshalb nicht nur, gefunden zu werden im Internet, sondern vor allem auch mit den erwünschten Informationen gefunden zu werden. Aber der Reihe nach: Der Name Je unüblicher Ihr Name ist, desto einfacher ist es, Sie mit Google zu finden. Wenn Sie Hans Müller heissen, hilft Google einem Sucher nicht viel weiter. Heissen Sie Hans Wladimir Müller, stehen die Chancen schon viel besser. Manchmal hilft es, seinem Taufnamen mit so einem Zusatz auf die Sprünge zu helfen oder sich einen Internetnamen zuzulegen. Denken Sie aber daran, dass Namen, die hier bei uns unüblich sind, in anderen Gegenden der Welt so häufig sind wie Hans Müller. Pseudonym verwenden Definitiv an Ihrem Namen schrauben sollten Sie, wenn Sie auf eine Art und Weise aktiv sind im Internet, die von Personalchefs nicht gern gesehen wird. Also zum Beispiel in Form von frechen Kommentaren, hitzigen Debatten, aufreizenden Bildern und Ähnlichem. Wenn Ihre Haare schon langsam ergrauen, schütteln Sie wahrscheinlich den Kopf und sagen: «Ich doch nicht!» Sind Sie aber zwischen 15 und 20 Jahre alt, dann trifft diese Beschreibung ziemlich genau das, was Teenager gern tun. Schon immer getan haben. Früher jedoch waren die wilden Jahre schnell vergessen, wenn der junge Rebell sich die Haare schnitt und eine Lehre in einer Bank antrat. Heute kriegt er die Lehrstelle schon gar nicht, weil das HR-Departement all die deftigen Sprüche im Internet und die heissen Bildchen auf der Party-Website findet. Vor allem Jugendliche sollten sich deshalb für freche Sprüche und Party-Websites ein Pseudonym zulegen. Kinder richtig taufen In Amerika ist die Googleability bereits ein Kriterium für Eltern bei der Wahl eines Taufnamens für ihre Kinder. Unübliche Namen oder seltene Namenskombinationen nehmen deshalb stark zu in den Taufregistern, und auch bei uns dürfte die Zahl der wunderlichen Namen in nächster Zeit massiv steigen. Es fragt sich allerdings, womit man dem Kind das grössere Geschenk für seinen Lebensweg macht: mit der einfachen Auffindbarkeit – oder mit der Anonymität. Webdomäne reservieren Wer
gefunden werden will, muss nicht nur einfach im Web vorkommen, er muss
so vorkommen im Web, dass Google ihn möglichst hoch oben auf der
Resultateseite aufführt. Am höchsten bewertet Google Namen, die als
Webadressen direkt vorkommen. Eine sehr einfache Methode, Google auf
die eigene Site zu lenken, ist es deshalb, sich eine Webdomäne mit dem
eigenen Namen zu reservieren und darauf Informationen über die eigene
Person zu veröffentlichen. Wenn man jetzt nach «Hans Wladimir Müller»
sucht, wird die Seite www.hans-wladimir- mueller.ch» bei Google sehr
hoch oben auftauchen – unter anderem deshalb, weil anzunehmen ist, dass
sie genau davon handelt.
Auch wenn Sie keine eigene Domäne besitzen, können
Sie auf Ihrem Weblog oder auch bei einem der grossen Gratisanbieter
eine Seite «Über mich» kreieren. Nennen Sie den Titel der Seite, also
das, was beim Ansurfen im blauen Rahmen des Browsers angezeigt wird,
aber nicht «Über mich», sondern setzen Sie Ihren Namen in den
Seitentitel. Auch diese Massnahme wird dafür sorgen, dass die Seite von
Google ein bisschen weiter oben aufgeführt wird. August 02 Get Your Free Net Phone Calls Here
Stuart Goldenberg
An Ooma box allows free calls to anyone in the United States, linking
the home phone to broadband. It also provides a free second line. By DAVID POGUE
The price of home phone service has dropped 30 percent since 1999. Surely, say the analysts, that trend line will eventually plummet all the way to zero. Surely, thanks to the Internet’s ability to carry your voice, landline phone calls will soon be free. Already, dozens of calling services promise to slash your residential phone bill by exploiting the Internet. And yet nobody has yet delivered the holy grail: free calling, to any phone number, from your regular telephone. There’s always a catch. For example, programs like Skype offer unlimited free calls — but not from your phone. You and your conversation partner have to sit at your computers wearing headsets, like nerds. Then there are those annoyingly named VoIP services (voice over Internet protocol), like Vonage. You plug both your broadband Internet modem and your existing phone handset into an adapter box. Presto: unlimited domestic calls from your regular phone. But they’re not free. You pay about $25 a month, and you hope that your VoIP company won’t suddenly go under, as SunRocket did last month. If you’re still forking over $60 or $70 a month for residential phone service, here’s a guide to some newer Internet-calling options. iCall.com. The promise: Free calls to domestic phone numbers. The catch: Your friends pick up their phones to answer, but you still have to sit at your computer. In other words, iCall removes only half the drawbacks of Skype. People can also call you from their phones (iCall assigns you a number, with an extension). But here again, you have to take calls at your computer, not your phone. Jajah.com. The promise: Unlimited free calls to anyone else who’s signed up for a free Jajah account in the United States, Canada or 35 other countries. You use your regular phone. There’s no special equipment, contract, monthly fees or prepayment. The catch: You don’t talk on your computer — but you need a Web browser to initiate calls. You begin at jajah.com — or, if you have a Treo, BlackBerry or iPhone, at mobile.jajah.com. There, you type in both your phone number and the one you’re calling. In about 10 seconds, weird as this sounds, your phone rings: the Jajah Web site has called both of you, connecting the call from the middle. It works reliably and the voice quality is good, but having to place calls from a Web site is a hassle. The “free calls to Jajah members” part gets a little complicated, too. The calls are free to both landlines and cellphones in the United States and Canada, but calls to overseas members are free only to landlines, and then only in 35 countries (in Europe, parts of South America, plus Australia, Israel, Japan and Taiwan and others). When you’re not calling a Jajah member, overseas calls can be very cheap: how’s 3 cents a minute to England or China? Calls to some other countries can still hurt, though. Afghanistan is 26 cents a minute. Greenland, 50 cents. Cuba — gulp — 86 cents. And those are landline prices. Calls to overseas cellphones often cost five, six or seven times as much. That’s too bad, considering how many people outside the United States use only cellphones. T-Mobile. Its new HotSpot@Home cellphones make unlimited free calls whenever you’re in a wireless hot spot — or when you’re at home, since a free home Wi-Fi router comes with the deal. Calls you place to numbers in the United States from overseas hot spots are free, too. The catch: Your voice plan costs an additional $10 a month. Only two bare-bones phone models are available for this program, although more are on the way. The free calls are available only in hot spots that don’t require a login in a Web browser. (The exceptions: Calls are free from any of T-Mobile’s 8,500 commercial hot spots in the United States — coffee shops and so on.) PhoneGnome. This gets complicated, so read slowly. PhoneGnome offers three ways to make free calls through the Internet, all of which should now sound familiar. One works just like Jajah (type in your number and the other person’s, and both your phones ring). The second method works just like Skype (wear a headset at your computer). And the third is like VoIP: you buy a box ($100) that plugs into both your phone and your broadband modem. The PhoneGnome box, though, entails no monthly fees; you pick up your phone, cordless or not, and dial. If you’re calling someone who uses any of the three PhoneGnome plans, the call is free. The catch: Calls to non-PhoneGnome members aren’t free. The plans are cheap: for example, $15 for unlimited domestic calls, or $6 a month for unlimited calls to your favorite 10 numbers. A recording tells you, each time you dial, whether the call will be free. But over all, PhoneGnome’s various permutations are not for the easily befuddled. (Geek note: The PhoneGnome box is a user-friendly version of the Linksys SPA3000, beloved by techie types.) Ooma. This September, you’ll be able to buy an Ooma box for $400. (The price will be $600 next year.) Then you can make all free calls to numbers in the United States, all the time, from your phone, without paying anything to anyone. The Ooma box, which looks like a classy little desktop intercom, plugs into both your broadband modem and your telephone. If you have other phone extensions, you can equip each with a $40 minibox. From then on, you just pick up the phone and dial, free and unlimited. Better yet, the Ooma box gives you a free second line (though not a second phone number). If you’re on one call when another comes in, the other phones in your house ring so someone else can answer. (You hear the traditional call-waiting beep in your ear.) Or someone else in the house can lift another receiver to place a second call. The box also serves as an answering machine; in fact, through the box’s speakerphone, you can hear messages as they’re being left. You can also check your messages on a Web site. The Ooma system is diabolically clever — and crazily ambitious. It exploits the practice in this country that local calls (usually within a 12-mile radius) are always free, even with basic phone service. When you call long-distance, your Ooma box connects over the Internet to another Ooma box in the destination city belonging to a total stranger. That person is never aware of it and neither are you, but that Ooma box places a landline call for the final, local leg of the call. Behind the scenes, in other words, Ooma relies on a vast peer-to-peer network. Ooma says it needs only 1,500 boxes in place to cover 95 percent of the population in the United States — which is why it’s giving away that many boxes this summer (by invitation only). The catch: The Ooma scheme relies on people who retain basic phone service, which, with taxes and fees, costs $24 to $28 a month these days. If you keep your home line, you keep the traditional 911 emergency service, for example, and you have a backup system if the power goes out. (Of course, a cellphone presumably serves the same purposes.) If you cancel your home phone service entirely, Ooma still works, but you’ll be issued a new phone number by Ooma. Ooma calls exhibit a fractional-second delay, much as cellphone calls and VoIP calls often do. It doesn’t stop you from getting your message across, but it can throw off your comic timing. Finally, if Ooma goes out of business, the whole house of cards collapses. All of those $400 boxes stop working. Fortunately, if you have a $60 monthly phone bill now, you’ll have recouped your Ooma expenditure in seven months. Besides, Ooma has $27 million in venture capital, not to mention the actor, Ashton Kutcher, as the company’s creative director. (Ashton Kutcher? How could anything possibly go wrong?) Of all of these approaches to free Internet calling, T-Mobile, Jajah and Ooma come the closest to delivering the holy grail: free calling, to any phone number, from regular phones. Even they are not entirely without drawbacks — but they’re certainly enough to keep phone company executives awake at night. July 09 egy millio iphone kelt el amerikaban2007. július 6. 11:28, Péntek - Forrás: Napi Online Kevesebb, mint egy hét alatt, a szerdai munkaszüneti nap (július 4., a függetlenség napja) ellenére több mint egymillió kelt el az iPhone érintőképernyős, mobil internetező-zenelejátszó-telefonból a fejlesztő Apple Inc. és a mobilszogáltatást nyújtó AT&T szakboltjaiban. Alig találni olyan boltot, ahol még kapható a ketyere, és aki az interneten rendelte meg annak heteket kell várnia iPhone-jára - írja a CNN Money. A gyártó titkolja, hogy összesen hány készüléket szállított ki - a hiány kialakulásában szerepet játszhatott az ünnepnap, amikor nem tudták feltölteni a boltokat. Közben egy ismert norvég hacker, Jon Johansen weboldalán közölte, hogy feltörte az iPhone kódolását - jelentették a hírügynökségek -, így annak internetező és zenelejátszó funkciója használható az AT&T hálózatán kívül is. Telefonálásra ugyanakkor ilyenkor nem alkalmas, mivel Wi-Fi kapcsolaton keresztül lehet vele fellépni a világhálóra. A készséges hacker minden technikai tudnivalót és szoftvert felrakott az oldalra azoknak, akik a nyomába kívánnak lépni. Végül ezzel a felszólítással zárja sorait: "Pereljenek be!" June 22 YouTube Live on Apple TV Today; Coming to iPhone on June 29Best YouTube Experience on a Mobile DeviceCUPERTINO, California—June 20, 2007—Apple® today announced that iPhone™ users will be able to enjoy YouTube’s originally-created content on their iPhones when they begin shipping on June 29. A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube’s content to iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on iPhone’s stunning 3.5 inch display. In addition, Apple announced that YouTube is now live on Apple TV™. Users can download the free software update using Apple TV’s built-in software update feature, and then easily navigate through YouTube’s familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos. “iPhone delivers the best YouTube mobile experience by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Now users can enjoy YouTube wherever they are—on their iPhone, on their Mac or on a widescreen TV in their living room with Apple TV.” To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos. Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall. The combination of H.264-encoded videos plus iPhone’s built-in Wi-Fi networking, stunning 3.5 inch display, and custom YouTube application with its multi-touch user interface results in the best YouTube experience on any mobile device.
Pricing & Availability
Apple TV users can download the free software update using Apple TV’s built-in software update feature. Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone. June 14 Apple Introduces Safari for WindowsPublic Beta Available Today for Mac & WindowsWWDC 2007, SAN FRANCISCO—June 11, 2007—Apple® today introduced Safari™ 3, the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Windows PCs and Macs. Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari joins iTunes® in delivering Apple’s legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac® users as well as full support of open Internet standards. Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organize tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information. Safari 3 public beta is available today as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. “We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari’s superior browsing experience too.” Safari has always been the fastest browser on the Mac and now it’s the fastest browser on Windows, loading and drawing web pages up to twice as fast as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Mozilla Firefox 2.* The speed of Safari combined with its intuitive user interface lets users spend more time surfing the web and less time waiting for pages to load. Other Safari features now available to Windows users include SnapBack™, one-click access to an initial search query; resizable text fields; and private browsing to ensure that information about an individual’s browsing history isn’t stored. Safari 3 supports all modern Internet standards so users can view websites as they were meant to be seen, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and Java. Safari software updates are delivered seamlessly through Apple’s Software Update application, which automatically checks for updates.
Pricing & Availability
System Requirements
*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Testing conducted on an iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows XP, with 1GB of RAM. Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone. May 14 Gerüchte um iPhone-Vertrieb in Europa
In den USA vertreibt AT&T Apples iPhone exklusiv. Gemäss dem britischen Magazin «MarketingWeek» steht der Vertriebspartner für ganz Europa auch fest: T-Mobile. Sollte sich Apple tatsächlich für T-Mobile als Exklusivpartner in Europa entscheiden, hätte das iPhone in vielen Ländern, darunter auch der Schweiz, kaum Marktchancen. In der Schweiz wollen gemäss Macprime.ch Orange, Sunrise und Swisscom Mobile das iPhone vertreiben. Die Zeit bis zum Verkaufsstart in Europa gegen Ende Jahr wird wohl noch für intensive Verhandlungen genutzt werden müssen. Bewahrheiten sich die Gerüchte hingegen, steht der Markteintritt des iPhones in der Schweiz unter einem schlechten Stern. May 10 State of the Art / A BlackBerry for Collars of All ColorsBy DAVID POGUE
As a human being, you’re pretty much stuck with the features you had on the date of manufacture. Very few adults ever become substantially taller, faster or more artistic. In consumer electronics, though, it’s another story. By nipping, tucking and incorporating improved technologies as they come along, companies can refine a mediocre product through successive versions until it’s a success — if they know what they’re doing. Research in Motion (R.I.M.), maker of the BlackBerry e-mail phone, definitely knows what it’s doing. If you need proof, just look at the new BlackBerry Curve, which will be available first from Cingular/AT&T in a few weeks. The price hasn’t been announced, but $250 with contract is a good guess. (R.I.M. also announced the cameraless corporate BlackBerry 8830, which, surprisingly, works on the Verizon network in this country and also on the ordinarily incompatible G.S.M. networks overseas.) The BlackBerry, as any corporate white-collar type can tell you, is an addictive little cellphone with a Stuart Little thumb keyboard. Its best trick is delivering e-mail from any kind of account in real time, as it arrives, without your having to fetch it. In fact, if you have Yahoo Mail or a corporate e-mail account, your BlackBerry even synchronizes your actions wirelessly. Send a reply from the BlackBerry, and you’ll find it in the Sent Mail folder back on your computer. Lately, though, R.I.M. has been on a quest to hook the rest of us: the hordes who place just as much emphasis on making phone calls and playing music. The tiny BlackBerry Pearl, released last year in chrome and black, may be the most gorgeous smartphone ever designed, and it won legions of new noncorporate fans. As the torn-out hair tufts from a smartphone designer’s head can attest, however, you can’t have it all; a phone can either be sleek or have a full alphabet keyboard, but not both. The Pearl has only 14 keys to represent the entire alphabet, most labeled with two letters. Built-in software guesses at which word you want. That system is generally successful, but it can occasionally drive you nuts. Typing in a word that’s not in its dictionary can take minutes, as I discovered the day I tried to address a message to my friend Jennifer Bowtruczyk. The point of the new BlackBerry Curve, then, is very simple: it’s a BlackBerry Pearl with a full QWERTY keyboard. On this new model (also called the BlackBerry 8300), every letter gets its own key. Of course, this new phone is wider than the Pearl, but it’s the smallest full-keyboard BlackBerry ever: 4.2 by 2.4 by 0.6 inches, which is shorter and thinner (but slightly wider) than the Palm Treo 700. It’s nice that R.I.M. chose a cool name like the Curve, instead of calling its new machine the DCR-5700C or whatever. Still, Curve is a baffling name for this phone, which is no curvier than other BlackBerrys. Nor is R.I.M. throwing you a curve, as in “something totally unexpected”; the Curve is a pleasant and logical descendant of the Pearl. It even has the Pearl’s translucent central clickable trackball, which is so efficient a navigation tool that you forget all about the lack of a Treo-like touch screen. Actually, several of the Curve’s components are improvements on its predecessor’s. The camera’s flash is much more powerful, and the photo resolution is now two megapixels (although the photos still look as if they came from a phone). You can run a new spelling checker before firing off an important message, although it doesn’t flag errors as you type them, as Word does. The volume increases automatically when you’re calling in a noisy place — an extremely obvious feature that ought to be on all phones. The Curve’s biggest overhaul, however, has been in its multimedia features. New, attractive, graceful software is in place for playing music and showing photos and videos. You can install a microSD memory card, too — a good thing, since the built-in 64 megabytes of storage hold precious few tunes. Weirdly, you have to remove the battery to get at it. A new piece of Windows software lets you set up a “watched” folder on your PC desktop; any videos or photos dumped into it are converted into a format that the BlackBerry likes — and are copied over to it. Better yet, the Curve is one of the first cellphones to offer Bluetooth stereo music playback. That is, it can transmit music from your pocket, wirelessly, to a pair of lightweight Bluetooth headphones; the sound is fantastic. Some of these headsets even have microphones for making calls; when a call comes in, the music pauses automatically until you hang up. If that all sounds a little bit too 2012 for your tastes, here’s a less radical feature: this phone has a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack. That’s the same audio jack that’s on the iPod and every other music player in existence. On the BlackBerry, it means that you can listen to music with any headphones you like. This, too, may sound like an obvious feature, until you realize that the earphone jack on 99.99 percent of cellphones is a 2.5-millimeter jack, too small for standard headphones. (The Curve comes with wired stereo earbuds that have a microphone on the cord.) That’s really the whole Curve story: smaller, lighter, masterly at multimedia. The rest is pure, traditional, delightful BlackBerry. Efficiency nuts in particular will lap up the ingenious keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can press the I and O keys for “zoom in” and “zoom out” (when viewing photos); N and P stand for “next” and “previous,” T and B for “top” and “bottom,” and so on. In e-mail addresses, you can tap the Space bar to produce the @ sign instead of hunting for a special symbol. The BlackBerry puts in apostrophes automatically in “wont,” “dont,” “Im” and so on, and auto-capitalizes sentences. There’s also a simple Ringer Off switch on the top, a screamingly obvious feature that is, bizarrely, a rarity on cellphones. You can charge the phone with a U.S.B. cable attached to your laptop. And the e-mail program can open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, PDF, JPEG and GIF attachments, which is very cool indeed. This is a G.S.M. phone, meaning that it works in most other countries (for an additional fee, of course). It works as a speakerphone; you can dial by voice; you can assign speed-dial numbers to any key; and the ring tones are rich and polyphonic. Unfortunately, the Curve also inherits some of the Pearl’s downsides. It can’t capture video at all. And despite the full keyboard, AT&T’s Curve can’t get onto any of the popular chat networks like AIM, MSN or Yahoo — only Google Talk and BlackBerry’s own proprietary network. More appalling to the techie set is that while the BlackBerry’s Web browser is nicely designed (and saves you from having to type “http://www” each time), it’s slow; you wait about 10 seconds for the text of a Web page to appear, and 15 more for the graphics. That’s because this phone can connect only to Cingular/AT&T’s sleepy old Edge network, and not to the much faster one that’s already available in several big cities. There’s no Wi-Fi wireless, either. Finally, of course, there’s the little matter of the network itself; Cingular/AT&T’s cellular coverage is not what you’d call universal. The Curve’s audio quality is fine — but only when a decent signal is available. Still, only a curmudgeon would focus on those nits. This BlackBerry is a great phone (four hours of talk time, 17 days of standby); a fast, comfortable, responsive e-mail terminal; and a surprisingly full-fledged multimedia machine. With its super-intelligent software design, it blows away all those awkward Windows Mobile phones, like the Motorola Q and the Samsung BlackJack, and presents a tantalizing alternative to the Treo. (The choice of smartphone won’t become any easier in June, when Apple’s even slimmer iPhone is introduced with gigabytes of storage, a complete iPod system and a huge full-length screen — but no physical typing keys.) All of this is good news. Because even if you can’t upgrade the components you were born with, it’s easy enough to improve upon the ones you buy. A Site Where Virtual Barbies Can Compare Their MakeoversBy WARREN BUCKLEITNER
Barbie dolls collide with Web 2.0 with the release of BarbieGirls.com, a free online community which Mattel hopes will pull young girls away from competitors like Ty Girlz, Neopets and Webkinz. Once children pick a screen name and password, they can dress up their own Barbie avatar, a fun process of mixing and matching hairstyles, clothing items and shades of lipstick. There’s no bad hair; in fact, every creation looks like a slightly different beauty queen. Girls soon learn that some of the dress-up items, like that green purse with sparkles, are reserved for those who own a $60 Barbie-shaped MP3 player, left, due out in July. When the player is plugged into the U.S.B. port of your Windows computer, the virtual baubles are unlocked, along with V.I.P. access to the virtual pet store. When in the coffee shop or hair salon, girls can chat with other users. In the interest of keeping things safe, the conversation is heavily filtered to the point of turning into nonsense. But at least Barbiegirls.com presents the possibility of meeting another virtual Barbie, perhaps one whose accessories have been chosen by a girl halfway around the world. May 03 Windows-Flop: Keiner will Vista
[20 Minuten] -
Grund sei eine entsprechende Nachfrage, erklärte das Unternehmen auf
seiner Website. Dell hatte wie viele andere Computerhersteller mit dem
Erscheinen des neuen Betriebssystems Windows Vista von Microsoft
umgestellt und neue Rechner fast nur noch damit ausgeliefert. Ende März
hiess es, es gebe für Heimanwender nur zwei PCs, die mit XP
ausgeliefert werden könnten (Geschäftskunden haben hier mehr
Wahlmöglichkeiten). April 19 Moving Day for That Vista MachineBy LARRY MAGID
BUYING a new computer is a lot like buying or renting a new home. First you have to pick it out and pay for it, and then you have to move your stuff. And as if PC moving day weren’t hard enough, most people now faced with this task have to migrate from an older version of Windows to the new Windows Vista, which typically stores user files in different folders from previous versions. Fortunately, there are a number of tools to copy folders and files from one machine to another. The Windows Easy File Transfer program that comes with Vista can help migrate program settings while Laplink’s PCMover can migrate settings and try to move your software. Before settling on a moving tool, consider how you want to set up your new PC. One strategy is simply to copy your data files from one machine to another and reconfigure everything from scratch. That might mean losing all your browser bookmarks and desktop icons and having to re-enter your e-mail settings, but it also means you get a fresh start with your new machine. When it comes to moving software, simply copying program files from one Windows machine to another rarely works because most programs have to be properly installed before they will run. With the exception of PC Mover, none of the products I tested even try to move programs, but they will move your pictures, documents, music and other data, and in some cases your program settings. For software, the most reliable plan is to install your programs from their original CDs or DVDs or by downloading them from the Internet. If your programs (like recent versions of Microsoft Office) require activation before they work, you can try reactivating them over the Internet, but the program vendor’s antipiracy policies might prevent that. In most cases you’ll get a phone number to call so you can explain that you’re taking an old machine out of service and moving the software to a new one. Although most of the tools’ creators say they “move” files, what they are really doing is copying them, leaving the original machine as it was. Unless you plan to keep the original machine in your possession, you should be certain to use software that permanently deletes files before you give it away, sell it or recycle it. One way to get files to the new machine is to connect the two machines by a wired or wireless local area network and use built-in Windows tools to copy files. You can also back up the old machine to an external hard drive, CDs or DVDs and restore them to the new machine — or you can create an ad hoc network of sorts by connecting the two machines with a cable designed specifically to move files. One advantage to using an external drive to move files from one machine to another is that you’ll have a backup of your data when you’re done and can continue to use that drive to back up data from the new machine. Also, the machines don’t have to be in the same location — handy if you’re setting up the new PC in a different room from the old one. For $210 you can buy a 500-gigabyte Maxtor Personal Storage external U.S.B. drive that comes with backup-and-restore software. Other options include a 160-gigabyte U.S.B. drive from SimpleTech ($100). These drives have software that can back up data from your old machine and restore it to your new one — or, to make things simple, you can use Windows Explorer to copy your data directories to the external drive and from the drive to your new PC. Seagate’s new line of FreeAgent U.S.B. 2.0 drives it calls “data movers,” starting at $110 for an 80-gigabyte version, allow you not only to move data between machines, but also to run programs from one computer on another without having to copy programs, data or configuration files between them. If you have a wired or wireless Ethernet network, you can use the network to copy files from one machine to the other. Networking two or more Vista machines is pretty easy, and while it is possible to network a Vista machine to one running Windows XP or an earlier operating system, getting it to work properly with XP can be tricky. If you do use a network, you have to give the two operating systems permission to share the appropriate folders, then drag the folders from one machine to the other. Vista comes with a data and settings migration program called Windows Easy Transfer that you can use with a cable, a network, CDs, DVDs or an external drive to transfer files and settings between Windows XP and Vista (or files only from Windows 2000). When you run the program you get a message telling you that it can be used to transfer “user accounts, folders and files, program settings, Internet settings and favorites and e-mail settings, contacts and messages,” but that’s not entirely correct. Although it works with some third-party programs, don’t count on it to copy settings from all non-Microsoft browsers, e-mail programs or other software or to find documents that aren’t where Windows expects them to be. It didn’t copy settings from the latest version of Firefox, and it was necessary to use an advanced configuration to have it copy documents stored in the directories I set up myself. On the plus side, it will automatically copy documents stored in XP’s default folders to the appropriate folders on Vista. Machines with earlier operating systems don’t come with Windows Easy Transfer, but when you run the program on your Vista machine it will create the necessary software for you to copy to a removable drive for installation on your XP or Windows 2000 machine. If you’re not using removable media or a local area network, you’ll need a cable to connect the machines. Microsoft recommends the Easy Transfer Cable for Windows Vista from Belkin ($40), which comes with a CD-ROM with software for your older machine along with an eight-foot U.S.B. cable with some electronics to speed the transfer. As with all transfer strategies, how long it takes depends on the number and size of your files as well as any software or disk activity running that can slow the process. It can easily take an hour or longer. Laplink’s PCMover software ($60 with a cable or $50 for download version) works with Windows versions going back to Windows 95. In addition to moving files and settings, it also moves your software. As with the Microsoft product, you can use it with a network, external media or a cable. After installing the software on both machines and connecting the cables, it took about three hours to migrate software, data and settings from my XP machine to a new Vista PC. While the software did move all my program files, not all of the programs worked right away. Microsoft Office, for example, required me to insert the original CD-ROM to validate that it was a legitimate copy. A program I use to connect to a virtual private network moved over nicely, but the necessary configuration didn’t work on the new machine. By the time I finished getting everything working, it might have been just as easy to reinstall my programs. When it comes to copying data, I found the Tornado to be the simplest and fastest approach because it was extremely easy to install. The $60 transfer device consists of an oval box (approximately 4 1/2 by 3 by 1 inch) with a retractable U.S.B. cable on each end. The Tornado doesn’t even come with a CD; the software it needs to transfer files is stored on its own flash memory and is automatically installed on both computers as soon as they are connected to it. While setup and installation are automatic, you do have to select the folders you wish to copy, so you will need to know where your old machine stores its data files and where Vista expects them to be. A list of frequently asked questions on the company’s Web site documents all that. As with any other move, it will take some time before you feel comfortable, so never try to configure a new PC or upgrade an old one just before a deadline. No matter how much thought you put into the process, there will always be some application you forgot to copy over, or a file you’ll need to hunt for. Kind of like that set of towels from your old home that you still haven’t unearthed. March 01 thoughts on music |
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