FOXNews.com - Report: Google to Announce Cell Phone Within Weeks - Technology News | News On Technology

Quoting this article:

Most radical of all, however, the presumably Linux-based OS would be "open" to third-party developers, meaning that anyone could create applications for it.

and

Rumors are that the Google phone would have few, if any, such restrictions, and would support GPS tracking, Wi-Fi, high-speed "3G" cellular networking and a still and video camera, depending on the hardware.

Gosh, sounds a lot like Windows Mobile phones to me. Third party developers create all sorts of apps for WM-based phones. Check out Handango.com sometime. And take a look at the Tilt, i760 and other WM PDA phones. GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G, still and video cams - yep, you'll find all that and more.

What the article doesn't say here (but what I've read elsewhere) is that Google plans to support this "free" phone software with phone-based advertising. Ugh.

Of course, to the anti-Microsoft crowd, everything Google does is golden. And I'll readily admit they still have the best search engine. Their mobile phone OS might be nifty, too - I haven't seen it so I don't know - but none of the "radical" and "innovative" features touted here indicate that the gPhone will do anything WM6 doesn't already do, except maybe inundate phone users with ads.

Just hours after my post, wondering why the iPhone rates are so much higher for the family plan than that of other AT&T phones when the rates for the individual plans are the same, I got mail from a reader who suggests that Apple is "anti family."

Now I wouldn't go that far, but it does make you wonder. Especially when Apple has come out just in the last few days with a new policy restricting iPhone sales to two per customer and requiring a credit or debit card so you can't "cheat" and buy more at different stores. What if you have a family of four and wanted to outfit all of them with iPhones? Are you out of luck?

Those who know Steve Jobs' personal history note that there's more than a little anti-family sentiment in his life; it's well known that he refused for a long time to acknowledge the paternity of his first child. He himself was an illegitimate child given up for adoption. However, he's been married since 1991 and has three more children (source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/26/MNG7EHUEQ51.DTL) .

Apple says the reason for the two-iPhone limit is to discourage "unofficial resellers" and ensure there are enough to go around for the holiday buying season and that's a legit concern, I guess. But if they enforce this policy strictly, they're certainly going to make some families angry about having to choose which members get the two allotted iPhones. And how does that policy fit in with AT&T's family plan for the iPhone, which allows you to add up to 3 additional lines (for a total of 5)?

Somehow I don't think this policy is going to last long. Even if that's not the intent, it appears to some to be a slap in the face to families. And with this coming on the heels of Democratic House member Charlie Rangel's tax reform plan with its "wealth surcharge" that carries an enormous marriage penalty, some families (especially those who make enough money to afford multiple iPhones) are feeling a bit put upon these days.

In the October 22 edition of WXPnews, I wrote that one way in which the Samsung i760 is superior to the iPhone is its ability to read Word and Excel documents. Turns out that the iPhone can do this, too - what it can't do is open and view PowerPoint presentations. Thanks to Dave F. for pointing out my mistake.

Dave also opined that Apple will provide Exchange server support in the near future. I agree. There are just too many folks like me who want/need that to be able to even consider the iPhone as a viable option.

I did get a chance to really play with one this past weekend. I have to say that no matter now anti-Apple you are, if you hold one of these things in your hand and experience the browser, in particular, you can't help but be impressed. High prices, control freakishness and bad attitude towards customers aside, Apple got the mobile web experience right.

An interesting note is that while you can buy AT&T's other PDA phones, such as the Tilt, without Internet/data service, it's mandatory with the iPhone.

Of course, I'm still trying to figure out AT&T's calling plans. I think the problem is that I'm expecting logic and there doesn't seem to be any. According to the brochures I got, an individual AT&T Nation plan with 450 minutes, unlimited mobile to mobile, 5000 night/weekend minutes costs $59.99 with unlimited data on the iPhone, whereas you pay the same price for that amount of calling minutes without data access when you buy AT&T's other phones.

However, the 700 minute family plan for the iPhone costs way more than with the other phones ($109.99 vs. $69.99 for two lines). Why the big penalty for families? With regular phones, the family plan is a great deal (700 minutes for $69.99 with two lines means you get 250 more minutes and another line for only $10 more per month).

Ah, well. It's not like cell phone providers' documentation ever makes a lot of sense. If you look at Verizon's web site, it appears that you can't even add data access to phones on the family plan anymore, but the guy in the store assured me that you can.

As mentioned in this week's WXPnews, in November I'm going to be faced with the choice of whether to renew my Verizon contract (and probably get the i760) or take a chance on AT&T and the Tilt. The latter has a lot to recommend it, but I'm wary of dumping Verizon when their service has been almost flawless for six years. Decisions, decisions.

I'm happy to report that I got the problems with Outlook and other Office 2007 , caused by my unsuccessful attempt to uninstall AVG Free, fixed. Although the Windows Installer dialog box hung indefinitely when I tried to open either Outlook or Word, trying to open PowerPoint caused the Installer to go through its setup routine, after which PPT opened and then Word opened. For Outlook, I got a message indicating my failed attempts to open it in Safe Mode previously and asking if I wanted to do a Detect and Repair. I answered "yes" and subsequently Outlook opened, as well.

Thank goodness for that. I also went into the control panel for AVG (which did not die) and tried to turn off email scanning. Despite the fact that the settings show it's off, I still get the following appended to the end of messages:

Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.485 / Virus Database: 269.13.16/1004

I think it's exceedingly stupid to put that on outgoing messages in the first place. What's the point of notifying everyone to whom you send email that your virus database is out of date? Doesn't that just invite someone to send you a virus? What in the world are AV makers thinking when they add this "feature" (and don't give you any way to turn it off)? Pop up a message on the local computer, sure - but don't advertise it to the world. 

Robert A. Heinlein had it right, but it applies to more than just lunch.

We have a large number of computers and the ever-increasing yearly fees for antivirus programs for all of them would add up quickly, so for some I've been using the free AV programs like AVG.

AVG worked great with Vista for a long time (and still does on one system) but on the other, after several months, it suddenly wouldn't update the virus database. If I tried to do so manually, I got the error message below:

Okay, fine. I would just uninstall it and use something else. Trouble is, when I tried to do that, it went through the uninstall routine and then gave me another error message, shown below:

Grrr. I tried it again, same thing. Okay, so I would try reloading AVG and installing it on top of itself. Maybe that would fix the problem. I went to the Free AVG web site at http://www.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-virus/us/crp/0 and downloaded the program again. When I tried to install it, I got this error message:

Okay, by now I'm thoroughly disgusted with AVG. You aren't supposed to have more than one AV program installed, but I thought maybe, if I were lucky, AVG was incapacitated enough so that it wouldn't interfere with another program. So I went to the Avast! Home Edition page at http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html to download that one, which I had used back during the Vista beta testing.

Clicked on the Download Now link and ... got a File Not Found message. <sigh>

I know when I'm beat. I'm now willing to pay the price for a non-free AV program. Oh, but that's not all. After all this, Outlook won't open. Apparently the AVG (failed) uninstallation killed it, too. Of course, Outlook is only the most used application on the machine.

And it gets better. None of my Office 2007 programs will open. I get a Windows Installer dialog box that hangs when I try to open them.

So it appears that I'll spend my Friday, instead of working on my current white paper, trying to bring this machine back to some semblance of usability. Thanks a lot, AVG. Updates as progress occurs.

 
We have a beautiful late October moon tonight (is this what they call a Harvest moon, or is it still too early for that?). Wonderful opportunity to try out the new Nikon in low light, and I'm impressed. These are all handheld.

One of the really neat things about digital photography is the way the camera records all the pertinent info about the shot in the metadata. It's great to be able to go back and see what ISO was used, the shutter speed/aperture, etc.

Those of us who labored with film cameras in the olden days now sound a little like our parents did when they used to tell us about walking ten miles to school uphill in the snow: "Back when I was young, I had to manually focus my photos and didn't even have a light meter built into the camera ... you young whippersnappers just have it waaaay too easy."

We knew it was only a matter of time. Once upon a time, PDF files could be considered safe, but no more. ZDNet and other sources are reporting PDF-based network attacks (see Attack of the PDFs by Ryan Naraine).

Adobe acknowledged a vulnerability in their Acrobat and Adobe Reader programs a couple of weeks ago and have now released a patch (at first, they just posted a workaround that required editing the Registry, a routine task for tech savvy users but one that many home users might not want to undertake).

A large percentage of computers have the free Adobe Reader software installed, and it's important to get the updated version (8.1.1) if you're running Reader on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7. The malware that exploits this vulnerability is nasty; it can lower the security settings on the computer and will try to disable the Windows Firewall.

Okay, I've been bitchin' and moanin' for months about Verizon's delays in releasing the Samsung i760 Windows Mobile phone after telling me at CES last January that it would be available in July. I was actually getting ready to check out other carriers when my contract's up November 2, if they didn't have something running Windows Mobile 6 on the plate.

I guess they finally can "hear me now." When the release date of October 19 was leaked on the web a week or so ago, my attitude was yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see it on the Verizon site or in a Verizon store. I'd been fooled before.

Well, on Thursday Verizon had commercials all over the airwaves advertising the Juke for release on October 19th. "Uh-oh," I thought, "they're going to do it to me again. It's the Juke that's coming out tomorrow instead of the i760."

Last night, though, I checked Verizon's web site as has become my habit, and lo and behold - the i760 is there! They certainly did sneak it in the back door without any fanfare, but that's okay. At least they finally have a WM6 phone in their stable. It's about time.

No, I'm not going to race out and buy it today (I might have in July, but that urgency has passed). I'll wait a month or so and see what others report. There are a couple of other WM6 phones on the way (such as the VX6800) so if this one turns out to have some fatal flaw, I might wait for something else. But I will be visiting the Verizon store so I can play with it a little. It's just nice to know it's out there, at last.

As much as I love new technology, I admit to being a Luddite when it comes to some things. Up until recently, photography was one of them. Although I owned and used several P&S digicams for quick and easy photo taking (including fairly high end ones like the Nikon Coolpix 8700), I was reluctant to invest in a digital SLR. Not so much because of the money, but because I was afraid a DSLR could never live up to my old Nikon F series film cameras for serious photography.

But I finally gave in to reality. Nobody does film anymore. Digital is king. And DSLRs no longer cost $20,000 or even $10,000; you can get top of the line models like the upcoming Nikon D3 for under $5000 (although barely under and that's for the body only) and excellent entry level models for well under $1000 (the Nikon D40 with lens is less than $500 on Amazon). So okay, I figured it was time to make the full commitment to digital. My first Nikon D series camera arrived yesterday. And already I'm wondering why I waited so long.

Photo quality is great. Forget my worries about that - the fine detail in my first few test pictures made a believer of me.

And finally, I can do all the things with a digital that I did with a "real" camera - and more. I once scoffed at the automation (after all, my very first Nikon didn't even have a built in exposure meter) but now I realize how handy it is to have it as an option, so long as you can go back to manual exposure, focus, etc. if/when you want to.

I'm learning to love the P (programmed exposure) mode, though. Yes, the camera sets both shutter speed and aperture for you, but with a flick of the command dial you can maintain that correct exposure and stop down for greater depth of field or open up for a higher shutter speed. That's convenient. And the 18-200 VR lens is just wonderful.

I'm going to have a lot of fun with this camera. And it's even more amazing when I realize that back in the old days, I paid $2000 for a film SLR and then had to pay for film and processing (or darkroom equipment and chemicals) on top of that. An extra battery, a couple of hi capacity memory cards, and I'm good to go. Sometimes progress isn't a bad thing at all.

  I've been buying DVD movies from Amazon for years. I have a whole roomful of them to prove it. Here are just a few views of parts of our rather extensive DVD collection:

But cool as it is to display those thousands of dollars worth of movies (literally), we're running out of places to store the boxes. DVDs are taking over our media room. So we decided to try something different: downloading movies from Amazon's Unbox.

It all began when the Media Center PC deleted last week's episode of NCIS before we got around to watching it. Discovering it was available on Unbox for $1.99, we decided to give it a try. It was as easy (and therefore as dangerous) as making any other purchase on Amazon - a couple of clicks and it was done. Video quality was good, although there were a few momentary jerky spots. But it was good enough that we used it again to download and watch two movies this past weekend.

Will it be a big hit? I'm not sure. Recent movies cost $3.99 to rent, $9.99 to $14.99 to buy. If you rent, you can only watch it once (and you have to do it within 24 hours of the time you start). If you buy, you can keep a copy on two PCs or TiVo DVRs. You have to install the Unbox Player software on your computer to watch.

Now, if I'm going to pay $14.99 to buy a movie, I'll probably go to WalMart and get the DVD. That way I get the nice box with it and most first run movies are only $15.99 when they first come out (or if you're patient, wait a month or two and they'll be $9.99). But Unbox is handy for renting - at least for folks like us who own Media Center PCs, or people with TiVOs. If you don't have one of those devices hooked up to your big screen TV, you'd be limited to watching the movies on your computer monitor. In that case, I'd probably prefer to rent the actual DVD from Blockbuster or Netflix so I could see it on the bigger screen.

The real use I see here is when your MCPC or TiVO for some reason failed to record your favorite TV show (or deleted it). For a couple of bucks, you can watch it without waiting months for the rerun. Yeah, I know all the popular shows are posted on the P2P networks or newsgroups almost immediately after airing, but downloading those is a copyright violation. Having RIAA after you just isn't worth it.

For some reason, ABC shows aren't available (sorry, no Grey's Anatomy). But NBC, CBS, FOX and a whole slew of cable channels such as Comedy Central, Sci-Fi Channel, Showtime, USA and even HGTV are. There are even a few free downloads so you can try it out without spending a peny. Check it out here:http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16261631 

In a post on Brighthand.com titled Google phone not a phone but an operating system?, it's reported that the much rumored Google Phone is a Linux-based OS that is "designed to be offered to phone manufacturers free of charge. Google would then make its money through using the OS to deploy targeted mobile advertising."

Targeted mobile advertising? Am I the only one whose immediate reaction to that idea is "thanks, but no thanks"? I believe I'll stick with Windows Mobile, even if it does make my phone cost a little more. I get quite enough "targeted advertising" in my email and on about half the web sites I visit, without getting it on my phone, too.

And I wonder how such advertising would be delivered? Will ads pop up when you turn the phone on? Will you get them as text messages (and if so, will you have to pay for them)?

Just goes to show that Robert A. Heinlein was right when he said "TANSTAAFL." There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Linux. One way or the other, you pay.

I keep reading about this "no email Friday" policy that's being enacted by many companies. Even the Wall Street Journal had a big story about it last Thursday (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119205641656255234.html). The whole thing reminds me of my childhood, when we had always had fish instead of meat for lunch every Friday, to accommodate the Catholics among us. I like fish, and I was never that crazy about beef and pork, so I never minded giving them up - but I like email, too. And I think it's silly for a company to arbitrarily ban a form of communication that helps people get their work done.

Luckily, I'm self employed so I can send email whenever I want. But I work with lots of folks in lots of companies and it can be annoying to send an important email on Friday morning and have to wait until Monday for an answer. I can't blame the employees; in some cases they get fined if they violate the policy.

The worst thing about these policies is that the point seems to be to get workers to use other alternative forms of communication. That might be okay when it involves getting up and walking down the hall to discuss a project with a colleague in person. At least it gets you some exercise. But when you're dealing with someone outside the company (like me), it usually means making a phone call. So I have people wanting to call me on Fridays.

I hate telephones. I hate having them ring when I'm in the middle of something, disrupting my chain of thought. I like email because I can get to it when I choose to. I hate telephone discussions because I often have trouble hearing or understanding the person on the other end. That's especially true if they're on a cell phone or using certain VoIP services or have speakerphones or headsets or have heavy British or Indian accents (and I'm sure some of them have trouble with my Texas accent, too). I like email because I don't have to puzzle over what was said (well, usually) and if the language is confusing, I have time to parse the sentences and figure it out. I hate telephone conversations because I often don't remember everything that was said, and sometimes people change their stories and say they said something different from what I remember, or claim that I said something I know I didn't and I can't prove otherwise. I like email because I have a permanent record of both what I said and what others said.

Luckily some of the companies that are doing this limit the ban to internal email messages and still allow their employees to send email to outsiders. Although to me that sort of defeats the whole purpose of "a day without email." It's sort of like those religions that require adherents to fast on holy days - but only until sunset. What kind of a sacrifice is that? People just end up pigging out at night.

So if you're going to give up email for whatever reason, you should give it up for real. In fact, if you're going to give up email on Fridays, I think you should give up phone calls, too. And faxes. IMs. Snail mail. Meetings -- definitely meetings. Verbal discussion, too. Let's give up communicating with anyone on Friday at all. No bosses barging into your office to give you a last minute assignment. No whiny customers calling to complain, no network users asking how to undo the reformat of their hard disks, no letters from vendors demanding payment. Just imagine how much more work we could get done then.

Or better yet, let's just take the day off and make it a three day weekend. Hmmm ... maybe I could get into the spirit of this after all.

Many of us have decided to pass on the iPhone, at least unless/until it's available on the Verizon network, gets a user-removable battery and its owners are allowed to install third party applications without ending up with an iBrick. I gave my reasons in my TechRepublic article titled Ten Reasons not to buy an iPhone - at least, not yet.

But in the meantime, what's the best phone to buy if you want a feature-rich calling plus handheld computing device?  There are some decent alternatives out there, and more that are just around the corner. Read my recommendations in my new article, Top Ten Alternatives to the iPhone.

These are by no means the only alternatives or necessarily the best ones for you. I wrote it from the perspective of someone who wants to be able to use the phone for both business and personal tasks and needs good email connectivity, web, etc. If you're more into the music and entertainment aspects of the iPhone, you may want to look at other options such as the new Samsung Juke (u470) that Verizon will be offering soon. You can read a review of it on the Mobileburn site.

The LG Voyager is another new phone that has a touch display, supports VCast Mobile TV and looks interesting for entertainment-oriented folks. It also has a bit of an iPhone look; you can see it on the LG site.

I stopped by my local Verizon store (inside Circuit City) two days ago and asked "when in the heck are you guys going to get the i760?" The guy there told me "any day now" - of course, they've been telling me that for months. But then yesterday, several sites posted announcements of "leaked" information about upcoming Verizon release dates, and the i760 was shown to be coming out on October 19th. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it.

Unlike XP, Vista uses shadow copies for system restore points. But where are these copies located?

To find out, navigate to a particular folder or file (such as a .dll in the System32 folder) in Explorer and right click it. Select Properties, then the Previous Versions tab. This will show you the shadow copies of that file and the dates on which they were created, as shown below:

To find out where a shadow copy is stored, right click it in the Folder Versions list and select Properties, then note the path in the Location field on the General tab, as shown below:

Vista gives you plenty of options when it comes to shutting down your computer. At the lower right of the Start menu, you’ll see three buttons: a Power button, a lock button and a right arrow button. Clicking the right arrow gives you all the usual choices: switch user, log off, lock, restart, sleep, hibernate and shut down. Clicking the lock button gives you a fast way to lock the computer. Clicking the Power button will save your work and programs as they are and put the computer into sleep mode or, if it’s a portable computer and the battery is low, this will save your work to the hard disk and turn it off.

Here's a screenshot:

Click to enlarge

If updates have been downloaded, they'll be installed when you click the power button. A notification of this will appear when you hover over the button.

One way to make a custom toolbar in XP or Vista is to use the New Toolbar selection when you right click the taskbar. Then you can browse to a folder and turn it into a toolbar. However, if you have multiple monitors, you may in some cases have trouble docking these new toolbars on your secondary monitors. Here’s another way that will overcome that problem.

1. Right click the desktop, select New and then Folder.
2. Name the new folder whatever you want your new toolbar to be.
3. Now drag shortcuts for the applications or files you want to access with the toolbar into the new folder.
4. Drag the folder onto the monitor where you want to dock the new toolbar, if it isn’t there already.
5. Now just drag the folder to any side of the screen (except the one that drags it off screen to another monitor). This will create a toolbar there with the contents of the folder.
6. Right click an empty spot on the new toolbar to change the size of the icons, configure whether or not to include text with the icons, etc.

You can put any kind of file or program on these toolbars. For example, I created a toolbar that holds shortcuts to each computer on my network. You can see it going down the right side of my screen below (that's a shot of my right-hand monitor in a three-monitor array). That's another custom toolbar (with commonly used applications) across the bottom.

If you look closely at the network shortcuts toolbar on the right, you'll see that it's just a bunch of identical computer icons. That's because I temporarily removed the text display for this screenshot, so as not to expose the names of all internal computers and servers on our network. Normally, each icon has the name of the corresponding computer under it. There's no need for names on the little Quick Launch bar across the bottom, since the application icons identify the programs.

By the way, my wallpaper is a photo of Cindy the red-tailed hawk. I got to meet her at Rogers' Wildlife Rehabilitation Center a few months back.

Last March, I wrote about my little Mio C310 GPS. I've been using it for the last six months and it's proven more than useful on a number of occasions. In addition to the navigation capabilities, the Points of Internet (POI) feature has been a godsend.

Once I needed to find a post office when I was in an unfamiliar area of town. In the olden days, that would have been quite a chore. I'd have had to stop at a pay phone (remember those?) and hope there was a phone book, or call Information to find out the address. In the cell phone era, I could at least make the call from the car, and with my Pocket PC phone and Verizon's unlimited Internet access, I could pull over and look up the address on the USPS web site. Still a bit of a hassle, though.

With the Mio, all it took was a few taps of the screen to go to POI and find Post Offices near my current location. Then I could just select the one I wanted and the device guided me to it. Very cool. The same feature worked like a charm again when my husband's truck broke down and I came to help him out, and we needed to find the closest Ford dealership to which we could have it towed.

 
Mio GPS devices contain millions of pre-set Points of Interest

Much as I've enjoyed it, I did wish it was a little more full featured, though. So when I bought a new Saturn a little over a week ago, I decided to invest in an upgraded GPS too (Tom gets the old one).

I wanted to research all the options, but because I really liked the Mio's basic performance, I started with that brand. I discovered the C520, which had all the features I had been wishing for. And after reading all the reviews and comparing it to those from other vendors, that's the one I ended up with.

Mio C520 on the dash of my new car

Specifically, it has Text-to-Speech (TTS) so that it can read street names. Rather than saying "Prepare to turn left in 100 yards" like the C310, it says "Prepare to turn left in 100 yards at Dalrock Road." No more hoping you have the right street if there are two that are very close together.

This one has a wider screen, which you can either use as a split screen with an information panel or hide the panel and use the entire screen for the map. Aesthetically, it's more attractive - thinner and in a professional looking gray housing instead of the bright white one of the C310. A minor quibble: the on/off button on top of the unit should be more prominent; it's difficult to find it without looking.

It also has Bluetooth, so I can use it as a hands-free device to make phone calls via my Samsung i730 Pocket PC phone. I had little trouble getting the two devices to pair up, and they worked great, both placing and receiving calls. The only complaint I have there is that the volume is a lot lower than the OnStar phone system. It's fine when you're sitting still, but on the road with the A/C going, it's harder to hear. But I do like that you can download your Outlook contacts to the Mio, and then use the information to make calls or navigate to their locations.

 
The C520 had no trouble pairing with my Bluetooth PPC phone

You can even watch videos on this one. Not that I'd be watching videos in the car, but it's also easy to click it out of the mount and take it with you, so I can see this being useful when you're stuck someplace and have to wait for an hour (for instance, to get your car inspected).  It's also an MP3 player, will display JPG or BMP photos, and has a built in calculator application, as well.

The main menu screen for the C520

The device has both an SD slot for easy access to your music and videos and a USB port for transferring data directly to the device. Unlike the C310, it can be updated. And it has even more Points of Interest: over 6 million.

So far, I like it a lot. And the price ($289 from Amazon/Tiger Direct) is hundreds less than comparable models from other vendors such as Tom-Tom and Garmin.