Apple’s computers are slipping in reliability compared to 2008, a report suggests.
Computer support hotline RescueCom on Tuesday issued its computer reliability report, announcing that Asus and Lenovo tied for the No. 1 spot while Apple dropped to No. 2.
To measure computer reliability, RescueCom looks at the number of consumer service calls made to its hotline (1-800-RESCUE-PC) regarding a tech manufacturer’s products while taking into account the company’s market share. The fewer the calls made about each vendor, the better — and this quarter Asus and Lenovo nabbed the top spot.
It’s worth noting, however, that this is just RescueCom’s quarterly report; the service also conducts a yearly report. Apple secured the top spot overall for 2008. We’ll just have to wait and see if Apple regains the lead over the rest of the year.
A Switzerland-based communication firm on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the corporation is committing patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization and tortious interference by promoting the iPhone as a touchscreen book reader.
In its 7-page complaint [pdf], Monec Holding Ltd, a business that develops and markets data transmission tools for mobile electronics, cites a patent it filed seven years ago titled "Electronic device, preferably an electronic book." The patent describes a lightweight electronic device with a touchscreen LCD display for reading e-books. The firm claims Apple is violating the patent by distributing reader applications through the App Store — thereby endorsing the iPhone as an eBook reader.
The iPhone has been a tremendous success for Apple, but it’s induced plenty of legal headaches for the corporation as well. In the past year, several dissatisfied customers have filed lawsuits alleging Apple falsely advertised the iPhone 3G’s network speeds. Apple sued for promoting iPhone as eBook reader [AppleInsider]
Think your favorite gadgets–GPS, media player, camera–and now reimagine them with wireless cellular connectivity. You can then browse for restaurants on your GPS navigator or upload pictures directly from the camera to Flickr anytime, anywhere.
Telecom services provider Sprint is hoping to make that possible by offering excess capacity on its cellular network available to gadget makers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
"Sprint understands that we are getting to a point where almost every digital device would want to be connected to a fast ubiquitous network," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy for Los Angeles based analytics firm Interpret. "Wi-Fi isn’t everywhere and consumers want the assurance of ubiquitous connectivity that wide area networks can offer."
Sprint has already taken the first step towards this model through its partnership with Amazon. Amazon kicked off the first version of its e-book reader Kindle with Sprint’s wireless connectivity to help users download e-books over the air. In its latest version, Kindle allows users basic web surfing using Sprint’s network without paying any additional data access charges.
This kind of unobtrusive wireless capability is something other gadget makers are likely to jump at. Sprint is already in talks with Garmin, SanDisk and Eastman Kodak, says WSJ.
"More and more we are going to see this become attractive to all sorts of vendors, especially if they can integrate it at a low cost," says Gartenberg.
Asus’s kooky idea of a netbook stuffed into a keyboard had us scratching our heads a few weeks ago. And now a video demonstrating the gadget has us even more skeptical of whether it’s a good idea. I suppose it’d be OK if you can afford a good chiropractor to re-adjust your neck every few weeks.
What’s next? A cellphone stuffed into a pistol? Try holding that up to your ear.
Asus’s Eee PC Keyboard contains a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM and either an 8GB or 16GB solid state drive for storage. It’s shipping May for $400 or $600.
Updated 2:30 p.m. PDT: Wired.com’s Dylan Tweney says he had some hands-on time with the Eee PC Keyboard. He explained it’s not meant to be a standalone PC. The small display shows applets design for the PC, and you’d use it as a companion for a TV. The keyboard would sit on your lap or a coffee table, and the small screen could bring up weather, channels, etc. and control what appears on the big screen.
Updated 12 p.m. PDT: Added link to previous post along with specification details.
A major new feature in Apple’s upcoming iPhone 3.0 operating system is the ability for applications to communicate with special third-party accessories. But engineers of Perceptive Development have already figured out how to do that with the current OS, getting an infrared keyboard to work with the iPhone. And here’s the kicker: They didn’t have to Jailbreak the iPhone. They used the iPhone 2.0 SDK.
PerceptDev engineers modified the iPhone’s microcontroller firmware used for the audio port modem, expanding it to detect an infrared signal and read from a USB host controller. (Read PerceptDev’s post for the nitty gritty, technical details.) With some tweaking they got the iPhone to communicate with an infrared keyboard using less than $20 worth of electronics.
Hooking up a keyboard through the headphone port? Who woulda thunk? Check out the video above.
This article was written on April 10, 2007 by CyberNet.
Time Saving Tuesday
I’m not sure about you, but I have several different Gmail accounts that I am constantly trying to keep track of. I’ve actually got 4 different personal Gmail accounts as well as the ones that I have Gmail manage for our website (using the Google Apps for your Domain). There are just too many email addresses for me to check on a regular basis, and the Google Talk client only lets you monitor the email address that your signed in with.
I looked all over for a good (and free) email notifier that I could use with multiple Gmail accounts, but there really aren’t many out there. There is an extension for Firefox called Gmail Manager that is supposed to monitor multiple accounts (including Google Apps), but I have experienced problems before with it where it constantly signs me out of one account and into another. Not only that, but I don’t want to bog down my browser with constantly checking 7 or 8 email accounts every few minutes.
Then it clicked! I’m constantly monitoring feeds using FeedDemon and so I’ll just have it monitor my email accounts as well. That way I can set it up to popup with a desktop alert anytime a new email comes into my Gmail account, and I never have to worry about a limitation on the number of accounts to check. Here is what FeedDemon’s notifier looks like:
It is important to note that FeedDemon is not free, but I use it because I believe it is the best feed reader available and is worth the $30. There are plenty of other feed readers out there though that have similar notifications without costing you a penny.
To gain access to your Gmail accounts feed there are two different types of URL’s that should work. The first URL is:
This URL will require that you sign-in to the Gmail service before it will give you access to the feed. If you’re using FeedDemon or another desktop feed reader it should prompt you to enter in the username and password for the account. Another URL that you can use looks something like this:
In that URL you’ll replace the “username” and “password” with your own account information. If you’re trying to use the Gmail feed with an online feed reader (such as Bloglines) this will probably be how you have to do it. Actually, Bloglines even has a notifier available so that you could receive the email alerts right on your desktop.
Don’t worry though…because there are a lot more ways to keep track of multiple Gmail accounts. If you don’t mind using some widgets/gadgets then you might find these to be good alternatives:
Long before Predator drones and PackBots patrolled Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned systems were used in combat—as far back as WWI and WWII, in fact. Here’s a quick look at the coolest of the old-timey warbots:
While reading PW Singer’s Wired for War, I was surprised by the ingenuity on both sides in coming up with unmanned—and even radio-controlled—machines that were occasionally actually used during the two biggies. I’ve highlighted six, plus an exceptional example of early computer intelligence, that are all covered at some length in the book.
(If you’re skimming this, just be sure to watch the second YouTube video below.)
FL-7 remote-controlled boat (1916) – Sadly unpictured – These German “sprengbootes” carried 300lbs. of explosives and were tethered by 50-mile wire to a dude on shore, sitting in a tower 50 feet up. The controller was too vulnerable perhaps, because they soon moved him into an airplane buzzing overhead, still trailing that long-ass cable.
Sopwith AT “Aerial Torpedo” (1917) – Maker of Snoopy’s famous Sopwith Camel biplane decided that it was possible to do the same thing, only radio controlled and full of explosives, call it the “Aerial Torpedo” and steer it into German Zeppelins. Trouble was, on its test flight, it tried to dive bomb a gathering of generals instead. Whoopsie. More info on the Sopwith AT, and another remote controlled plane of the era, the Queen Bee Tiger Moth.
Wickersham Land Torpedo (1917) – Another ill-fated warbot, this one was startlingly close in looks to the PackBots of today, with its two tank treads. But instead of a sophisticated computer brain, this one packed 1,000 pounds of explosive and a rudimentary remote control. Unfortunately for people who like big booms, it never went into production. More information on that and more “unknown” tanks here, sketch here and photo here.
OQ-2 Radioplane aka “Dennymite” (1935) – Actor and World War I hero Reginald Denny opened a hobby shop in the 1930s, and when the specter of World War II loomed, he introduced army personnel to their first target drone, the RP-1. They were impressed, and after several modifications and name changes, Denny was making them by the thousands at an airport in Van Nuys. (As fate would have it, it was at Denny’s factory in 1944 that an army photographer spotted a super hot Rosie the Riveter named Norma Jeane, who soon went platinum blonde and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.) More information on the OQ-2 and Marilyn Monroe’s discovery.
Fritz X guided bomb (1939) – Another specialty from Germany—the people who brought you the better known “buzzbombs,” this one was pretty much a straight-up bomb, but it had radio-controlled fins, so it wasn’t exactly smart, but it weren’t dumb neither. More info on Fritz here and here.
Goliath remote-controlled tank buster (1940) – If the Germans had time to work on their tank skills between the wars, they also had a little time to hone the tank-killing ‘bot. The Goliath has the same classic look as the American Land Torpedo, but managed to be far more effective. This startlingly vivid clip shows actual footage of Germans—sometime during the last gasps of the Nazi regime—steering one into a tank to blow it up.
Norden bomb sight (1932) – If the unmanned vehicles above represent prototypes in the body designs we see in today’s land, air and sea robots, the Norden bomb sight was the precursor to their cold, calculating brains.
A telescope would pick out a single spot on the ground, a series of gyroscopes and motors would hold that spot in sight, an analog computer would figure out the trajectory of the bombs needed to hit the target, and the whole thing would engage the plane’s autopilot to make sure the bombing went down as planned. You don’t have to read Catch-22 to know that, on bombing runs, nothing ever really went as planned, but the Norden was the closest they had to AI back in WWII, and there’s a reason it was said to “put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet” (even if that’s not going to do the bomb or the pickle barrel any good). More info here and here.
War nerds, please fill in the comments with your own knowledge of the above unmanned metal-and-gear beasts, or any other favorite ones I might have skipped, and so help me the first commenter to say “These are not robots” gets banned for stating the obvious, and being kind of a wiener about it.
If you haven’t yet read through our interview with Wired For War‘s PW Singer, have a look. And stay tuned for more exciting nuggets of info from the book, a trove of robot trivia not to mention a chilling portrayal of how robots have already infiltrated our military.
Netbooks are good for many things, although none of those things is “actual work." For simple browsing, e-mailing and perhaps even listening to music, the little laptops are ideal. For actual, heavy day-to-day use, they’re still lacking.
I was reminded of this today when I took my Wind Hackintosh to the local library to work. I was lazy and figured it would be easier to sling in my bag than the usual MacBook and, given that blogging is an online activity and my NetNewsWire account is synced across machines, I would have all my tools with me.
It quickly became clear that I was wrong. First, there were no power sockets free, so I was running against the clock. The three-cell battery in my Wind lasts for around one-and-a-half hours on a good day. By the time I had replied to mail and dithered around, I was at around sixy-some percent. After one post, I was halfway to a dead battery.
Next was the keyboard. I have a mouse hooked up, so the terrible trackpad doesn’t matter, but the keyboard is just too cramped. My typing is always bad, but trying to tap out more than two words without a typo is impossible on this thing.
So I got to wondering, why do I have this machine? What else could I use it for? What is it actually good for? I came up with the following:
Photo Assistant
This was my first thought, and one I will test out this weekend on a trip to Rome (don’t tell the Lady — it’s a surprise). I will be taking the Wind to use as a portable backup for my photos.
It’s perfect: A netbook is tiny, and can be thrown into carry-on luggage. The screen is big enough for basic viewing and editing, and all netbooks have SD card readers built in. My Wind clone has a 160GB hard drive so there’s plenty of space, and the addition of a tiny, bus-powered external drive will mean I have two copies of everything.
Compare this to buying extra memory cards. I use Sandisk’s Extreme IV CF cards in my D700, and the 4GB ones are around €50 ($70) a pop. Just five of those cost the same as a Wind, and are easier to lose.
Traveling Researcher
This one is fantastic. I recently spent a week in Berlin with the beautiful and vivacious John Brownlee, formerly of Boing Boing Gadgets. We hung out with another of his friends, a guy named Travis who reads stuff for a living and had a netbook tethered to his BlackBerry’s data connection (he also had a couple of six-cell batteries).
We had a typical geek week, hanging out in Wi-Fi bars with our computers, but as Travis was always connected, he ended up as a human version of the Star Trek computer. Every single fact could be checked, and he did it. It sounds simple but the change this makes to a conversation is incredible, if impossibly nerdy. And that’s before we get started on the Instant Rimshot.
Clock
Download the excellent Fliqlo screensaver (pictured above) and turn your netbook into a nightstand clock. Any clock would do, of course, but this one has just the right retro-ness (it’s just like Marty McFly’s clock in Back to the Future) and is free. OS X and Windows.
Alternatively, use your computer’s built-in ability to display a slideshow as a screensaver and use the netbook as a $350 photo frame.
The Airport Express is a great piece of kit — hook it up to a pair of speakers and you can stream music wirelessly from any computer in your bachelor pad. But if you already have a netbook knocking around, you can save yourself the $100 that the Airport Express costs.
You’ll need software. Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil is an application that will stream anything to an Airport Express, not just music from iTunes (it even does movies). The $25 app comes with a free companion application (which can be downloaded separately) called Airfoil Speakers. It runs on OS X or Windows and turns your netbook into a virtual Airport Express. You just hook the netbook up to the speakers and stream from anywhere in the house.
I’m not kidding. Right now I’m sitting on the Lady’s bed typing this, using my MacBook (the battery on the Wind died at the library after two posts). My lap was getting a little hot so I looked around for something flat to tuck underneath and protect the family jewels. The little netbook came to the rescue and is now adding an inch or so to the gap between lap and laptop.
Your turn now, readers. To what other uses can a netbook be pressed? Suggestions in the comments.
After last weeks teaser, Peek has officially announced its new e-mail only device, the Pronto, and it addresses pretty much all the shortcomings of the original.
The big new thing is push. The Pronto now supports five e-mail accounts (up from two) and all of them get pushed directly to your handset. This really is a poor man’s Blackberry replacement, especially as the Pronto supports Microsoft Exchange. The Pronto also gets search (at last!) and can now display Word (.doc) files and PDFs along with pictures.
The biggest news, though, is that the $20 per month plan now includes unlimited SMS messages. Yes, send as many as you like, contract free. This could be huge, especially for people who don’t actually use a phone to make phone calls. Now you can stay in touch with old fashioned talkers as well as those more advanced emailers. I would buy one of these today if I could, but the Pronto is only available in the US.
The Pronto is a little more than its $50 brother, at $80, but probably worth it for the texts alone. The plan, as we mentioned, is contract free and still $20 per month, and the Pronto is only available in boring business gray.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
For this week’s 
Second Place — Chariot is drawn by a horse
Third Place — Howard Suissa
Long before Predator drones and PackBots patrolled Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned systems were used in combat—as far back as WWI and WWII, in fact. Here’s a quick look at the coolest of the old-timey warbots:
Ultimately, they decided to do like 
Sopwith AT “Aerial Torpedo” (1917) – Maker of Snoopy’s famous Sopwith Camel biplane decided that it was possible to do the same thing, only radio controlled and full of explosives, call it the “Aerial Torpedo” and steer it into German Zeppelins. Trouble was, on its test flight, it tried to dive bomb a gathering of generals instead. Whoopsie. More info on the 
Wickersham Land Torpedo (1917) – Another ill-fated warbot, this one was startlingly close in looks to the PackBots of today, with its two tank treads. But instead of a sophisticated computer brain, this one packed 1,000 pounds of explosive and a rudimentary 
OQ-2 Radioplane aka “Dennymite” (1935) – Actor and World War I hero 
Norden bomb sight (1932) – If the unmanned vehicles above represent prototypes in the body designs we see in today’s land, air and sea robots, the Norden bomb sight was the precursor to their cold, calculating brains.
