5 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Apple reportedly refreshing iPad in January; April will bring MacBook Pro with light peak [TNW Apple]
- TNW Mobile Review: HTC Surround [TNW Mobile]
- The Assault On The Physical Keyboard [TNW Mobile]
- Today is the first official “Small Business Saturday” [TNW United States]
- The most awesome crow/crow/cat/cat fight you’ve ever seen [TNW Shareables]
- Book Of Fame turns your Facebook account into an actual book [TNW Media]
| Posted: 27 Nov 2010 03:04 PM PST  Around the backchannels here at TNW, we’ve been discussing the pros and cons of a late-year purchase of new Apple products. According to what we’re reading over at Edible Apple, it might be a good thing that a number of us have waited. In making sense with Apple’s release schedule, the iPad is due for an update in January. Apple reportedly has two special events planned in the first quarter, which would likely mean that we’d see one in January for the update of the iPad, then another in April. As far as the timing is concerned, it’s honestly not a surprise to see Apple refreshing the iPad in January. We’ve heard rumors for quite some time now about the parts being ready for manufacturing, as well as some rumored specifications of the new device. Given the 1 year timeline on a new item such as the iPad, January makes perfect sense. What, then, would come in that April event? Look for significant changes to the MacBook Pro line, as well as an update to the aging Final Cut Pro. Edible Apple states, and we agree, that the MacBook Pro update is likely more than just a specifications refresh. In, fact, we’re guessing that Apple is carving an entirely new device. Expect, first and foremost, to lose your standard hard drive. Given the success of SSD within the new MacBook Air line, it wouldn’t surprise us at all to see Apple pull standard drives out of the manufacturing market. A bump up to 512 GB of storage should be on tap to make the transition less painful for those of you who don’t live primarily in the cloud. There’s also the rumor of the upcoming light peak technology. What is it? The short version is that it’s a way to transfer massive chunks of data at incredible speed. What kind of speed? How about symmetrical 10 Gbps? That’s pretty freaking fast. If you still need a bit more convincing about the cool factor of light peak, here’s a demo from Intel: [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]     |
| TNW Mobile Review: HTC Surround [TNW Mobile] Posted: 27 Nov 2010 01:07 PM PST Windows Phone 7 devices, announced March 15, had some proclaiming it an “iPhone Killer.” Once Windows Phone 7 made its way to the hands of reviewers the reviews were mixed. AT&T was kind enough to send an HTC Surround to us to review and outside of Tweeting about my initial thoughts, I’ve said very little about the device, until now. The HTC Surround sports the completely re-designed Windows Phone 7 operating system, is a device for media fiends, featuring a slide-out speaker and fold-out kickstand. The HTC Surround arrives with the following specs:
With the basics covered, let’s dive into the device, the guts, the hardware, and the OS, to see if Microsoft has a smartphone hit on their hands. Operating System and Hardware Fun
On all Windows phones, including the Surround, there are three navigation controls, back, Start and search. Other features of the hardware include a microUSB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack a power button, with sturdy volume toggle and camera shutter button on the right-side of the device. The device itself feels well-constructed. The HTC Surround feels substantial without feeling heavy. That said, at 5.8-ounces, the device is slightly on the heavy side. As for the aforementioned specs, the HTC Surround contains features like high-end models from other smartphone manufacturers: 1 GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera with flash and 720p HD video recorder, a bright and generally crisp 3.8-inch screen, 16GB of memory built-in, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and 7.2 Mbps 3G connectivity. Two items worth noting concerning the Surround is that it lacks a front-facing camera (odd given its primary focus is media) and the device also lacks an expandable memory card slot. Lack of an expandable memory card slot is strange given other HTC models can accommodate additional microSD memory to give their devices a competitive advantage over the likes of the iPhone, which lacks the feature. Multimedia Madness
With respect to playing music on the device, anyone familiar with Microsoft’s Zune will feel right at home. A few odd aspects conerning music playback present themselves, notably multiple screens available for each track and no built-in music sound settings. To solve the latter issue, download the free HTC Sound Enhancer app, allowing one to add bass, or employ a preset EQ setting. Super Look at Sound and Video Slide-up the screen, expose the speaker, and pop out the kickstand, and one’s ready to determine the media capabilities of the HTC Surround. Unfortunately, sliding up the screen doesn’t offer mind-blowing sound quality. In fact, other devices I’ve used with lower aural pretensions on both speakerphone or video playback modes, offer similar, if not better, sound than that of the Surround. Below is an example of the speaker, kickstand and media playback in action. Nice, but nothing out of this world. Is the Surround Functional? When trying out a new device I call my Grandmother. She’s hard of hearing making her a perfect subject to test a phone’s call quality. Of all of the devices I’ve tested, the Surround gets the call quality and clarity stamp of approval from my Grandma. Regardless of how a call was made, hands-free, speakerphone, or holding it up to my ear, all I contacted were impressed with the Surround’s call quality. Well done Microsoft and AT&T.
The remainder of the Surround’s functionality concerns the OS. The interface is intuitive and enjoyable to navigate. The first reason behind these advancements center on large, almost contiguous, icons, making finding them easier than those on other devices. Second, the apps on the primary home screen and the secondary screen are listed in a single, alphabetical, line. Navigating from one app or page to another requires two taps for the majority of functions. Apps for the phone, messaging, e-mail and the app marketplace clearly indicate the number of messages or updates awaiting your attention, again, a nice feature. The Web Browser The Surround uses Explorer as its browser. As an iPhone 4 user I found Safari to have a slight speed advantage over Explorer in basic tests. The difference wasn’t terribly noticeable, something noticed by others conducting similar tests. Unfortunately, the debate over which device has the faster browser cannot be settled, but what we do know is that Windows Phone 7, like the iPhone 4, does not support Flash, and when browsing on the Surround, occasionally text on Web pages can be distractingly jagged. Camera or Lack Thereof The Surround's camera is terrible. One nice feature concerning the camera centers on not requiring a camera icon on the home screen. Want to take a picture? Simply press and hold the camera shutter key, activating the camera from any app or condition, including sleep. The negatives concerning the camera far outweigh the positives. A list of the negatives: the OS does not remember adjusted camera settings, resolution defaults are 5 megapixels for still photos, VGA for video, and should one choose a lower resolution for stills or the higher HD resolution for video for a photo session, the Surround reverts to the defaults after leaving the camera feature. It’s as annoying as it sounds. Moreover, the image and video quality is substandard. Still images and videos fuzzy, detail is limited, and HD footage clocks in at 15 frames per second, instead of a full 30 fps. The only quality, and not by much, shots the Surround captured were indoor using flash. Another issue? If you want to hear dialogue while capturing video, only the included headphones will allow you to do so. Use any other headphones and you’ll experience nothing but silence. Battery Life Not much to say here. HTC claims 4.17 hours of talk time for the Surround. I found battery life on the Surround quite nice. A mid-day charge, typical on similar smartphones, was not needed. Well done HTC. Hits:
Misses:
Conclusion The HTC Surround's bulk, horrid camera and several unneccessary features standing on their own would make the device no one should consider purchasing if it weren’t for the wonderful Windows Phone 7 OS, strong battery life, and solid build of the phone. I encourage you to try the phone for yourself, and if you’re looking for a Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T, don’t forget they are buy one get one free this weekend. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
| The Assault On The Physical Keyboard [TNW Mobile] Posted: 27 Nov 2010 10:57 AM PST
First – and most imporatantly – came the iPad, while, like its smaller cousin the iPhone, isn’t a speed typing machine, it does a pretty good job of inputing text. In the euphoria around the Apple tablet’s debut, many people instantly said that the keyboard was dead – then, however, they started to try to do things like blogging, and quickly discovered that a keyboard was still a nice attachment to the iPad. Then Apple further muddied the waters when it recently debuted its latest line of MacBook Airs, which added touch elements through the trackpad, along with being a lighter option than the current iPad plus a bluetooth keyboard. Both Apple products have bright futures it would seem (if only for a short time for the Air, until it goes all-touch – perhaps as a two screened iPad?). Of course, not everything is made by Apple, and here is where things really get muddled, because only one non-Apple product really has made any impact towards the eventual end of keyboards this year (more about that product in a second). Knocked back on their heels by the iPad in 2010, netbook manufacturers could actually have a huge impact on keyboards in 2011 - through moving faster towards touch interfaces. Acer has already announced three models of Android tablets set to come out next year, and we fully expect all of the other netbook manufacturers to do the same. Yes, they’ll keep producing netbooks, but sales will continue be hit hard (including by their own tablets) and this will in turn drop a lot of affordable computers with keyboards out of the market. Then there are smartphones, many of which – including the iPhone of course – don’t have physical keyboards. Input recognition software is getting better all the time (Google recently bought a very promising startup in this area), and a number of scientists and screen manufacturers are working on vibrotactile feedback screens that could provide a sense of tactile response on keyboards through electrical charges. Even if netbooks disappear, there are still full-size notebooks and desktops right? Yes, of course there are, but ones that have physical keyboards are destined for extinction as sure as the dodo once was, and main culprit that will speed this up the fastest, isn’t headquartered in Cupertino, it’s in Redmond – that’s right, ironically perhaps, Microsoft could be the ultimate keyboard killer. That non-Apple product that we mentioned above is of course the Kinect, which after only being out a few weeks has already been hacked into a search and rescue robot prototype and can already be used to control a browser – just by moving your hands. We also learned earlier this year that in a Kinect related patent, Microsoft probably plans to include American Sign Language support to the Kinect in the future, which could conceivably be used to “talk” to a Kinect enabled device, including transcribing written works. Of course, perhaps with 3D TVs, the Kinect could actually be used to type on a projected keyboard that doesn’t exist. Beyond the Kinect, Microsoft has also submitted a patent that is in a way similar to the vibrotactile feedback idea, but which would create actual pixel-sized ridges on a screen (i.e. pixels would actually rise and fall depending on the need) that could actually form a type of “physical” keyboard rising right out of a touchscreen. If Microsoft – or someone else – could pull that off, we’re guessing whatever physical keyboards are left at that point would be thrown directly in the recycle bin, at least by early adopters. So how long is this going to all take? Well, we were tempted to call this piece “Can physical keyboards last another two years?” but upon reflection, it is hard to believe that no one will be using a physical keyboard in 2013. For one, even if a viable keyboard replacement appears, most people/businesses are slow to change, and it could take years before some of them make the switch. For earlier adopters, however, the need for a physical keyboard for play or work is quickly coming to an end.Image Credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
| Today is the first official “Small Business Saturday” [TNW United States] Posted: 27 Nov 2010 10:26 AM PST
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and American Express Chairman and CEO Kenneth I. Chenault announced the day less than a month ago on November 8th, 2010. Declaring it “Small Business Saturday,” the nationwide campaign is meant to spur business for small merchants on a day that falls between the big corporate shopping day better known as Black Friday and Monday’s online shopping, Cyber Monday. The campaign has successfully used social media to get the word out. Their Facebook page, garnered over 1 million fans in less than a month.
For every person who 'likes' Small Business Saturday on Facebook, American Express is donating $1 up to $500,000 to Girls Inc. to empower young women to be entrepreneurs of tomorrow.Mike Bloomberg [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
| The most awesome crow/crow/cat/cat fight you’ve ever seen [TNW Shareables] Posted: 27 Nov 2010 07:40 AM PST [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
| Book Of Fame turns your Facebook account into an actual book [TNW Media] Posted: 27 Nov 2010 06:20 AM PST
Created by Belgian creative agency Boondoggle LifeLabs, Book of Fame is a plain paper notebook, with Facebook status messages from you and your friends printed at the foot of each page. It sounds simple, but it could be a good way of immortalising those quickly-forgotten status updates. As the sales pitch says:
Two different options are available, a 320 page paperback book for $14 plus shipping or a 200 page hardcover for $18 plus shipping. If you’d prefer to immortalise your tweets, Boondoggle offers a Twitter option in TweetNoteBook, while Twournal (which we recently covered) offers a more comprehensive ‘diary’ of your tweets. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the only use we have for paper books in the future is to archive our online interactions? [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
The differentiating features of the HTC Surround is a slide-up speaker and kickstand. Nice features, but the device lacks a screen both large and crisp enough to make the Surround a true media powerhouse. Don’t get me wrong, the Surround has a nice screen, bright and sharp, but without a top-not screen, the addition of a slide-up speaker not only adds weight to the Surround, but also makes the device thicker. Therefore, the speaker, while a novel concept, is nothing more than a gimmick given the negatives of the feature outweigh the positives.
Concerned about one’s contacts? No worries. Windows Phone 7 devices, including the Surround can merge as many phonebooks as one needs (Google, Facebook, SIM, Outlook, etc.), bringing the advantages and communications options of all into the single People contact list.
Looking back, we may very well see 2010 as the year the tech world started its coordinated assault on the physical keyboard.
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