Great summary on what's new today from Apple by David Pogue (NY Time tech writer)

Well, Steve Jobs may be gone. But to the extent that Apple can keep alive the format and excitement of his onstage new-feature presentations, Apple is doing it.

On Monday morning in San Francisco, I watched the new Apple C.E.O., Tim Cook, give brief remarks at the beginning and the end of the keynote presentation at the Worldwide Developers Conference, which will apparently become what the old Macworld Expo used to be: a place for Apple to take the wraps off its latest inventions. He handed off the actual announcements to his lieutenants.

First, laptops: starting today, the new MacBook Airs are faster, they store more, they have combination USB 2/USB 3 jacks, and they cost $100 less than before.

There’s also a new, top-of-the-line super laptop, the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display ($2,200 and up). It’s very thin and light (0.7 inch, 4.5 pounds), has two microphones for better speech recognition — and, yes, it has a Retina display.

In other words, it has a screen composed of many more, much tinier dots than conventional laptops; at 2,880 by 1,800 pixels, it’s the highest-resolution screen ever to appear on a laptop. Apple notes that when videos are edited in Final Cut, you can see every single dot of a 1080p hi-def video you’re editing — and still have three million pixels of screen left over for your toolbars and timelines.

The next realm of news was Mountain Lion, the next version of Mac OS X. Apple had already demonstrated most of the new features, but there were some surprises. To me, the big one was dictation. After all of these years — after text-to-speech came to the iPhone and the iPad, after Windows has had dictation for years — you can now type by speaking to your Mac, in any program. (To make the Dictation button appear, you tap the Fn key twice.)

It’s the same technology that’s on the iPhone: behind the scenes, your utterances are sent to Nuance for processing and conversion to text, which is sent back to your Mac in seconds. In other words, no training is required — but an Internet connection is. No Internet, no dictation. I can’t wait to try it.

Apple also revealed Power Nap, a Mountain Lion feature for the new laptops announced Monday. It lets the Mac keep updating Internet data even while it’s closed and asleep. It keeps getting mail, calendar updates, Photo Stream updates, software updates and so on. The worry here, of course, is battery life, but Apple says it’s a minimal penalty.

On Monday, Apple also announced the timing for Mountain Lion — “next month” — and the price: $20. You can install that one copy on as many Macs as you own, without serial numbers or copy protection. You can upgrade from previous Mac OS X versions as old as Snow Leopard.

Finally, Apple showed what’s new in iOS 6 — the software for iPhones and iPads — which is coming this fall. (It will run on the iPhone 3GS and later, iPad 2 and 3, and iPod Touch fourth generation.)

The juiciest, best features were all saved for this software.

Siri, the voice-controlled virtual assistant that everybody loves or hates, has sprouted a lot more capability. Now you can ask about restaurants, and the results screen lists, for each restaurant, the average price, type of food, and so on. It’s integrated with the OpenTable app so you can make a reservation on the spot, and with the Yelp app so you can read reviews of each place.

You can also ask about movies ( “What movies are playing at the Metreon?” or “Show me movies starring Tom Cruise”) or sports (“What was the score of last night’s Yankees game?” “What is Buster Posey’s batting average?” “What are the National League standings?” “Who is taller: LeBron or Kobe?”).

And Siri will open apps. Yay! (“Open Angry Birds.”)

Apple also mentioned that a dozen carmakers (including General Motors, BMW, Toyota, Audi, Mercedes, Honda, Jaguar) have all agreed to add a Siri button to their steering wheels. This feature, called Eyes Free, lets you get information and operate Siri by voice as you drive — and the iPhone’s screen doesn’t even light up.

Finally, you can now speak to Siri in new languages like Spanish, Italian, French, German, Korean, Mandarin. Oh — and Siri’s voice-command feature is finally coming to the latest iPad.

You know how you’re in a meeting or a movie, and someone calls? Now, the Answer screen offers an icon that offers two new options: “Reply with Message” (sends the caller a canned text message like, “In a meeting — I’ll get back to you”) or “Remind Me Later.” That feature makes the phone use its GPS to remind you to return the call “When I get home,” for example, or “When I get back.”

Similarly, the new Do Not Disturb switch, in Settings, lets you tell the phone not to bother you with texts or calls or push notifications. They’ll still arrive, but won’t make the phone ring or buzz — unless they’re from certain special people you’ve designated.

Yes, some of these features have been available on Treo phones and others, but it’s great to have them on the iPhone.

Maps may be the gem of iOS 6. Apple felt that it was time to stop depending on its licensing deal with Google and other mapping companies. It therefore wrote its own Maps app from the ground up. It covers the whole world, and knows about 100 million businesses.

It has real-time traffic information — and where does it come from? Other iPhone owners. Crowdsourced traffic data is sent by them, in real time and anonymously, to Apple, so that it knows exactly where the traffic jams are. (You even get to see icons that indicate what is causing the traffic: construction, accident or whatever.)

For the first time, Maps now gives you spoken turn-by-turn directions, just like a windshield GPS unit, but smarter and better-looking. Siri is built right in; you can say, for example, “Take me to the Empire State Building” or “Where can I get gas?” or “Are we there yet?” (In that case, Siri responds: “Relax. You’ll be there in 14 minutes.”)

If you zoom into the map enough, you see the outlines of individual buildings. If you tilt the map, it goes into an amazing 3-D view — and in Satellite view, that even includes aerial videos of prominent landmarks. (Apple says that it’s spent the last couple of years filming Flyover scenes in helicopters.)

What else is on iOS 6?

• Facetime over cellular. Now you won’t be stuck in Wi-Fi hot spots when you want to make a video call from one iPhone/iPad/Touch/Mac to another.

• Shared Photo Stream. Now you can choose certain photos and share them with certain friends. Those photos appear in the friends’ Shared Photo Stream albums — in the Photos app (iPhone/iPad), iPhoto, Aperture, Apple TV or (on Windows machines) on a special Web page. You can even comment on them.

• Mail. As in Mountain Lion, you can now designate special contacts as V.I.P.’s. Their messages alone appear on the iPhone’s lock screen, and they collect in a special Inbox folder; basically, they cut through the clutter of messages. And at last, you can attach a photo or a video right from the Compose Message screen. (Until now, you had to start in the Photos app to send a picture to someone by e-mail.)

• Passbook. This new app keeps all of your electronic tickets/barcodes in one place: airplane boarding passes, movie tickets, store cards and so on. (These apps have to be rewritten to exploit Passbook.) When you get to the movie theater or the airport, you no longer have to find the app and then find the barcode within the app; the iPhone’s GPS figures out that you’ve arrived, and displays the correct pass automatically. (The best part may be the shredder-machine animation that appears when you delete a used pass.)

• Guided access. This new mode is something like kiosk mode. It prevents you from leaving the app you’re in — you can’t go back to the Home screen, for example. Apple points out that it’s great for children with autism, teachers who want to administer a test but block the ability to search Google for answers, or museums that want to create walking tours.

By the way, Apple made two other changes that didn’t make the cut for the keynote. First, new versions of Apple’s two photo programs, Aperture and iPhoto, will use the same database. That is, the same photos show up in both programs, with the same categories, tags, ratings, edits and so on, so you can flip back and forth as needed.

Second, there’s a new Airport Express (a pocket-size Wi-Fi base station). This one looks like a white Apple TV — a tiny square — that doubles the network speed and permits more simultaneous connections.

It’s clear that Apple intends to take certain new directions — that the rest of the industry, most likely, will follow:

• Discs are gone. Apple has killed off iDVD, its DVD-design program, and now it’s phasing CD/DVD drives out of its laptops, including the new 15-incher. (An external DVD drive is available, though.) The future, Apple thinks, is all online.

• Ethernet is gone. The new laptop doesn’t have an Ethernet jack for networking (although an adapter is available). It’s all Wi-Fi now, baby.

• Hard drives are gone. Hard drives are the last moving part on a computer. The solid-state ones in the Airs and Apple’s new laptop are faster, bump-proof, quieter, stingier with power — and more expensive. But that, surely, will change.

• Speech is in. Siri is slowly growing in power and in compatibility with Apple’s products, and built-in dictation is just arriving on the Mac. Clearly, Apple isn’t finished with it yet.

Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.

Over all, the presentation Monday morning was dizzying. There were many, many truly ingenious features revealed, some that played catch-up, and a lot to look forward to. None of it proves whether or not Tim Cook and his team can dream up entirely new product categories, the way Steve Jobs did. But for now, they’re doing an excellent job of keeping excitement alive in Apple’s current suite of machines.

Goodbye, MobileMe. Hello, SmugMug, Dropbox and Jimdo (excellent article by David Pogue, tech writer, NY Times)

In 2000, Steve Jobs had an epiphany: Apple controls both ends of the connection between the Mac and Apple’s Web site. As a result, he said, Apple should be able to create some pretty clever features to reward devoted Mac fans. The product of this brainstorm was iTools, a set of free services that included an e-mail account, a simple Web site-building tool (HomePage) and a virtual online “hard drive” (iDisk).

Over the years, Apple kept tinkering with the name, features and pricing of this service. In 2002, iTools became .Mac. In 2008, .Mac became MobileMe. In 2011, MobileMe became iCloud.

Actually, there was some overlap on this most recent transition. Today, the free iCloud service is up and running — and on June 30, MobileMe will shut down forever.

MobileMe’s most original feature was synchronization: wireless, automatic, seamless auto-updating of data among your gadgets. Your address book, calendars, e-mail, notes, Web bookmarks and other information were always up to date on all your machines (Macs, Windows PCs and iPhones/iPads/iPod Touches) — and always backed up.

That’s all part of iCloud now. But when MobileMe dies on June 30, three other useful features will die with it: iDisk, iWeb Publishing (one-click Web site building) and Gallery (beautiful online photo and video galleries). Apparently, Apple wants to get out of the storage business.

If you use those three features, your To Do list has just sprouted a couple of new items. First, you have to rescue your files from iDisk, iWeb Publishing and Gallery, because they’ll be deleted forever on June 30. Apple has posted detailed instructions for doing that on its MobileMe Transition page.

Second, you’ll probably want to find replacements for those three orphaned services.

Now, the bad news is that nothing out there is quite as slick, clean and well integrated into your Apple gadgets. But the alternatives offer a lot of choice and a lot of power. Here, for your timesaving pleasure, is a summary of the friendliest replacements. Best of all, all of them put together cost less than the $100 a year you’ve been paying for MobileMe.

Gallery

WHAT IT WAS Online galleries of photos and videos that you can “publish” directly from iPhoto, Aperture or your Windows PC. They can be public, hidden (visitors have to know the Web address) or password-protected. You can set them up so other people can upload photos to your albums. You can watch your MobileMe galleries on an Apple TV. No ads.

REPLACEMENT SmugMug.com.

Goodness knows, there’s no shortage of online photo gallery sites. Flickr, Shutterfly, PhotoBucket, Snapfish, 5oopx, dphoto, Fotki, Picasa, PhotoShelter — there’s probably one for every man, woman and child in America. Furthermore, plenty of people are satisfied hanging their digital masterpieces on Facebook, WordPress or GooglePlus.

What’s nice about SmugMug, though, is that you can post an unlimited number of photos for a flat fee ($40 a year, or $60 to post videos, too). There are no ads and no spam. You can upload photos directly from iPhoto, Photoshop, Lightroom, Picasa, Aperture, Android or iPhone. You can choose visual themes for each of your online galleries, and you can password-protect the private ones. You can share a photo on Facebook or Twitter with one click. The Pro plan lets you make money by selling your photos to your admirers online.

WHAT YOU’LL MISS The ability to view your galleries on an Apple TV. (Apple TV can show Flickr albums, but Flickr is a little ugly and complex.)

iDisk

WHAT IT WAS An online “hard drive.” It appeared on your screen as though it were an actual external hard drive — but since it was on the Internet, you could access it from any Mac or PC. It was therefore a great way to transfer big files between computers, or to keep important files available everywhere you went, or to send enormous files (too big for e-mail) to other people.

REPLACEMENT Dropbox or SkyDrive.

Like the iDisk, Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive create an icon on your computer — a folder, in this case — whose contents are duplicated online. You put files in there, and then marvel as they show up in the identical Dropbox/SkyDrive folder on all your other Macs and PCs. (and on the company’s Web site). Here again, they’re always up to date, always synchronized. You never have to send, carry, transfer or back up those files.

But Dropbox and SkyDrive go much further. You can create inner folders that you share with other people whose e-mail addresses you know. You can also grab or forward your files from your iPhone or Android phone. It’s all incredibly simple, reliable and beautiful.

You get 2 gigabytes of storage at no charge. Each time you refer a friend to Dropbox, you get upgraded by 500 megabytes, up to 16 gigabytes. Or you can pay a monthly fee for much greater storage.

SkyDrive’s deal is far more generous: 7 gigabytes, no charge.

There are many Dropbox rivals that strike different points along the complexity curve. SugarSync has many fans, for example; it’s a lot like Dropbox, but gives you more free storage (5 gigabytes), and you can designate any folder you like to be the “magic” one. Google Drive is more ambitious yet — its Web site is the former Google Documents, where you can create and edit word processing, spreadsheet and presentation files. And it, too, starts you off with 5 gigabytes.

But if you want Apple-like simplicity and smoothness, drop in to Dropbox.

WHAT YOU’LL MISS Very little. Expanding Dropbox’s storage is very expensive (the next step up from the free plan is 50 gigabytes for $100 a year), but it’s dirt cheap for SkyDrive; $10 a year for 20 gigabytes (which was the old iDisk’s maximum).

iWeb Publishing

WHAT IT WAS A way to create Web pages without having to know anything about creating Web sites.

Really, there were two parts to this system, and only one of them is going away on June 30. First, there was the iWeb program — layout software for designing the pages of your site. Second, there was MobileMe the hosting service, which displayed those pages for all the Internet to see. The first was the flier; the second was the bulletin board.

On June 30, your MobileMe-hosted sites will vanish. You can still use iWeb to design Web pages; you’ll just have to find a new company to host them. You can get instructions from Apple’s support site (support.apple.com/kb/HT4686) on moving your existing Web pages to your newly hired hosting service, but the steps get somewhat technical.

REPLACEMENT Jimdo.

The Internet is teeming with easy, do-it-yourself Web site building services. On these Web sites, design and hosting are combined. That is, you design your Web pages by dragging elements onto a blank page — a title, a text block, a picture, a YouTube video and so on. When everything looks good, you click Publish, and the page is now live online for your adoring fans to see.

There’s even a Web site that tests and reviews them: WebsiteToolTester.com. I asked its founder, Robert Brandl, which site is the best replacement for the old iWeb Publishing system.

“Based on the criteria you gave me (price/simplicity/features),” he wrote, “I can narrow it down to Weebly and Jimdo.”

He says that Weebly is easier to use and has a better free plan (a small ad appears at the bottom of every Web page). But Jimdo’s design templates are better looking, and the paid plan offers more advanced features. You can even sell stuff from your Jimdo site. And to help MobileMe refugees, Jimdo offers a MobileMe transition guide.

So there you have it: Three services that are ready to step into the shoes of MobileMe’s orphaned features. May they serve you long and well — or at least until the next time Apple rejiggers its online services.

 

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 9, 2012

 

The State of the Art column on Thursday, about online services to substitute for features of Apple’s soon-to-be-discontinued MobileMe, rendered incorrectly the name of a company that provides online backup storage. It is Dropbox, not DropBox. The column also misstated the maximum amount of storage available through upgrades to customers who refer friends to the services. It is 16 gigabytes, not 8 gigabytes.

 

I much prefer SugarSync to Dropbox. See: http://is.gd/b3iBvA and http://is.gd/ZXc0I1(videos)

Food Service Employers Often Rely on Food Stamps (quite an eye-opening article)

David McNew / Getty Images
David McNew / Getty Images

There’s a disturbing irony within the food industry: Many of its employees rely on food stamps.

The food sector accounts for 13% of our nation’s gross domestic product, collectively selling $1.8 trillion in goods and services. It employs about 20 million workers, or about one in five of all Americans working in the private sector.

(MORE: How to Go to the Movies for $1 This Summer)

But even though we rely so much on the industry – it provides us the very substance that keeps us alive, after all – we’re barely (and sometimes not) paying its workers a living wage.

According to a new report by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, only 13.5% of food industry workers earn livable wages. The median wage is $9.65 an hour, and 86% of workers are earning either subminimum, poverty or low wages.

Due to such depressed earnings, many food industry employees also struggle to just to eat, creating a rather depressing irony that those who feed us can barely feed themselves. Almost 14% of them rely on food stamps compared with 8.3% in all other industries. For the study, the organization interviewed 700 workers and employees in the five main sectors in food service: production, processing, distribution, retail and service.

(MORE: 10 Questions for Joseph Stiglitz)

It’s not just poor wages that food industry workers have to deal with. Most (83%) also don’t have health insurance and, as a result, many (35%) rely on emergency rooms for treatment when they get sick. And not having insurance may actually be harming those who rely on the industry employees. More than half of food industry workers say they have worked when they’re sick, largely because they either don’t have paid sick days or don’t even know that they do (79%).

Just as troubling, many of them (40%) work more than 40 hours a week and a third say they don’t always receive lunch breaks.

The future for many in the industry doesn’t look much brighter. Few food industry employees get on-the-job training that could help them find a better job or move up the ladder. Three-quarters of those surveyed say there is no ongoing training by their employer and about the same number say they have never had an opportunity to apply for a better job. More than 80% have never received a promotion.

The organization that conducted the study suggests a few ways to fix the situation, such as increasing the minimum wage and forcing employers to guarantee workers’ health benefits. But that sort of legislation doesn’t look to be imminent on the national level. The sad irony inside the food industry is only likely to persist.

More are on food stamps than in other industries. :-(

Why Facebook has won the mobile photo war

From the early days of the commercial web, one thing has been clear: photos are big on the Internet. All of us love photos. We love taking photos. We love sharing photos. They are the basic unit of digital emotion. Facebook understood this early on, and knew that when combined with its social graph, photos could be their one-way ticket to unending engagement and thus commercial success. Instagram was attacking Facebook’s Achilles’ heel — mobile photo sharing – so they bought the company, for a billion dollars. And in doing so, Facebook has pretty much won the war for mobile photo sharing.

When the news broke this past weekend that picplz, a mobile photo sharing app and service, was shutting down, it was a rude reminder of the Darwinian nature of the mobile app landscape. And picplz isn’t going to be the only mobile photo app to vanish into the mists of time. The reason for their misfortunes is none other than Facebook.

Picture Perfect

There are two main reasons why Facebook is a dominant Internet company. One, it is the first cross-platform and truly global identity provider. Second, it is the most constantly updated photo album on the planet. That is why photos are Facebook’s lifeblood.

Photos are the reason many of us continue to engage with Facebook. Facebook has tried many verbs to increase and maintain our engagement with the service – read, listen, watch. But in the end, it’s the photos that work wonders for the Mountain View Menlo Park, Calif.-based social-networking giant.

One of the biggest (and many) shortcomings of Facebook’s mobile app  is that it wasn’t simple enough for us to snap photos, share them and engage around them. Instead, what we got was a tired, convoluted little app. Facebook being Facebook knew that and had been quietly working on a mobile photo-sharing app called Camera that currently works on the iPhone.

The release of the Camera app came a few weeks after Facebook announced that it was going to acquire Instagram for about $1 billion in stock and cash. While many were confused as to why Facebook would have two mobile photo apps, in reality, it is a masterful move by Mark Zuckerberg & Company. Let me explain.

Private + Public Partnership

Facebook’s Camera app is a useful tool for seeing, sharing and interacting with photos that are part of your private social graph. Sure, you can share them publicly, but the app is meant to capitalize on our personal and private social graph. With nearly 900 million subscribers, Facebook is pretty much a giant here.

Buying Instagram brought Facebook access to the public graph. Instagram is more like Twitter thanks to its “follow” model. If your account is public, anyone can follow you, but you don’t need to follow them back. Instagram has grown rapidly to over 50 million people mostly because of this asynchronous model. Thus, when it comes to mobile photo sharing, Facebook now owns both private and public graphs and, as such, is on its way to dominating the mobile photo-sharing market.

In order to understand Facebook and the role photos play for the service, check out these stats:

  •  In August 2011, there were over 250 million photos uploaded each day
  • On average more than 300 million photos were uploaded to Facebook per day in the three months ended March 31, 2012.

The NPD Group estimates that in 2011 smartphones accounted for about 27 percent of all photos and videos we snapped, up from 17 percent in 2010. Now imagine when there are many more easy-to-use smartphones out there. Photo overload! And Facebook currently is one of the few companies that has the scale and size to store that many photos — an advantage that cannot be dismissed or overcome easily.

The New York Times art critic wrote a wonderful essay, Everyone’s Lives, in Pictures (I wrote something similar last year) where she quotes  Susan Sontag as writing:

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.”

In the time of Facebook, that message is amplified. And the best is yet to come, some experts say.

Twitter vs Photos

As Facebook has shown, people love engaging and interacting with photos more than simple text. With Instagram, Facebook can start to take some attention away from Twitter, and that can’t be a good thing for the San Francisco-based company.

I am always confounded that Twitter hasn’t built a Twitter-only photo sharing app and instead has chosen to work with third parties for photo sharing. It is a mistake that can come and bite them later in their life. I would argue that in time, Instagram’s public graph can become as big–if not bigger–than Twitter itself. Like I said, there are more people likely to share and like photos than write tweets.

As I said earlier, if you look beyond Facebook and Instagram, if you look at the recent success of Pinterest, you know that pictures are big on the Internet. Why? Because we all love photos. Everyone can take photos and share them with their friends. Photos are meant to elicit emotion. And they are inherently social.

Unfortunately, that was a lesson not learned by Google and Yahoo, both of which had opportunities to turn their successful photo-based web properties into the beginnings of a social revolution. Google owns Picasa, while Yahoo owned Flickr, arguably one of the most influential web companies of the post dot-com era. Today’s social behaviors, the emergence of community, usage of meta-tags, a simple “follow” model and, of course, social validation were some of the key contributions of Flickr to the web.

Gizmodo, in a recent post, outlined how Yahoo mismanaged Flickr. (Thomas Hawk, a longtime member of Flickr, has a wonderful, if somewhat less read, response to the Gizmodo story that is worth reading.) If Flickr had embraced the post-iPhone mobile, Yahoo might have owned the mobile photo opportunity. Ironically, pre-iPhone, when Nokia was well known for its camera phones, Yahoo/Flickr were a pretty big deal in the mobile. But that is the way of the big companies — there is a desire to boil the ocean and build a big solution when the actual opportunity is right under their noses.

For Facebook, photos are no joke. The company will do whatever it takes to keep us engaged with photos. And as for other also-ran photo services, the reality is that like picplz, they will not even be footnotes in the history of technology.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Expect iOS 6, new MacBooks at Apple conference Monday

In today's show, we look into the Apple crystal ball, get hit with more apps and save up for new games:

Apple will be highlighting new products at its annual Developer's Conference Monday. Expect computers to get Intel's new processors, and we'll likely hear about new 3D maps on iOS 6 and other mobile system upgrades.

Some have said laptops could get retina display, which is found on iPhones and iPads. That seemed pretty improbably, until recently. An application for Macs has been updated to support retina graphics. That raised a few eyebrows.

The presentation kicks off Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific. Be sure to follow all the news from CNET's WWDC live blog.

Facebook has launched App Center, which is a hub of hundreds of mobile apps. When you select an app, Facebook redirects you to download it from Apple's App Store or the Google Play Android store. Facebook's just doing this because all apps that post to Facebook benefit Facebook's bottom line. It's slowly rolling out to all users.

I didn't get the App Center yet, but I did notice another change to my Facebook page: The field to type in my status update now asks me "What's the best thing that happened to you today?" instead of the usual "What's on your mind?"

A new question replaces the typical "What's on your mind?" prompt for Facebook's status field.

(Credit: Screenshot by Bridget Carey / CNET)

Apparently Facebook is testing new attention-grabbing tactics to get us to write more status updates? Or maybe I'm just so negative, that Facebook is just trying to get me to post something happy. (Sigh.)

The big video game conference E3 wrapped up, and we got a taste of what's coming soon from the top video game publishers. If you don't follow games, be sure to watch today's show for a fast-paced rundown of the new title's you should keep an eye on (and save your money for), and compare your favs with Jeff Bakalar's best-of E3 list.

I'm most looking forward to Injustice. What about you? Your questions and comments can make it on the show. Use Tout to message Bridget with a 15 second video reply from your webcam or smartphone camera. Or, simply post a reply video to the CNET YouTube channel. You can also send an email.

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What Pogue Actually Bought (tech writer at the NY Times) - very helpful article

I get plenty of reader e-mail, and if I had to graph the question categories, “What should I buy?” would be the tallest bar by far.

FDDP


The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.
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If you could hold your finger down on that bar to explode it into sub-bars, “What do you own?” would be a pretty tall one. Imagine, in other words, if your job let you test and try every single brand of camera, tablet, phone, laptop and GPS, which would you buy for you and your own family?

That’s why, every couple of years, I write the following post: What Pogue Actually Bought. Hope it’s useful to somebody.

Main computer. A 13-inch MacBook Pro. I also have a Windows desktop and laptop, and there’s an iMac in the kitchen for the kids, but the laptop is my main machine.

I’d love to get a MacBook Air, which is just as fast and far lighter and thinner. My problem is storage. The Air uses a chunk of memory, a solid-state drive (SSD) as its hard drive, rather than a physical, spinning disk. That’s great. Fewer moving parts, faster start-up, better battery life. But SSD’s are very expensive, and come in small capacities. The biggest one you can get in an Air is 256 gigabytes, compared with 750 gigs on the traditional hard drive on a MacBook Pro. I traffic in photos and videos; I’d run out of space quickly on a 256-gig drive.

I’ve been experimenting with other solutions: keeping my main photo and video collections at home on an external drive, for example, and having only the latest on my laptop. For now, though, I’m hauling around two extra pounds and a DVD drive I never use.

Camera. I bought the amazing Canon S100, a tiny pocket camera with the biggest sensor on the market. I wrote about my reasons here. But in two weeks, I’ll be switching my allegiance. You cannot believe what’s about to come down the photographic pike. Trust me: If you’re in the market for a small camera with astonishing photographic results, hold off for a few weeks.

I also have a Nikon D80 with three lenses, an SLR that’s showing its age. It still takes fantastic pictures, but I ache for better speed and to be able to capture video. Truth is, I use it less and less in the age of big-sensor, pocketable cameras. But I’m thinking of replacing it one of these days with a D5100, which is just about at my prosumery level.

Phone. I have an iPhone 4S. I’m constantly looking at and testing Android phones, which are just getting better and better  — the imminent Samsung Galaxy S III looks positively juicy — but for now, features like Siri and the whole iCloud thing are keeping me in the Apple camp.

It’s a Verizon phone. As an East Coaster, my fondness for the Verizon network’s ubiquity led me to overcome my cynicism regarding Verizon, the company.

Phone case. None. I know I’m tempting fate, but the Gorilla glass hasn’t yet let me down, and if you’re going to buy a phone for its slimness and beauty, why bury it in plastic?

GPS. We own two cars: a Honda Fit and a Toyota Prius V. They’re absolutely fantastic cars; I’m so proud of myself for choosing them. They both have built-in GPS.

In general, the Honda’s GPS is light-years better than the Toyota’s. For one thing, it doesn’t lock you out when the car is in motion, so the passenger can program in your address while you drive. For another thing, it’s simply better designed. The Prius’s GPS weirdly lists my town as being in “NY Metro Region” instead of Connecticut, for example.

But the Prius’s built-in GPS has a perk that, let’s hope, will soon come to all cars: the ability to speak your destination address instead of painstakingly tapping it in on the touchscreen. And you can do it while you’re driving. “200 West Hartley Extension, New Rochelle, New York.” Bingo: you’re on your way. I’ve waited years for this.

Software. My family relies upon BusyCal for our calendar, which is just about one of the best programs I’ve ever used for anything. Fast, crashproof, simple, attractive, and it speaks to all the online calendars like Google’s and iCloud’s.

The rest of my life is spent in Mail, Word, Excel, Photoshop, FileMaker and this ancient freeform database cards program called iData. My notes, lists, brainstorms, phone numbers, driving directions, recipes, Christmas gift ideas and other thoughts have been happily trapped in that program and its predecessors for 20 years.

I also use TextExpander, which expands typed abbreviations for better speed and accuracy, and a little free macro program called Spark, which lets me open various programs and perform other functions with keystrokes of my choosing. And Dropbox. Wow, I love Dropbox, although I’ve added SkyDrive (7 free gigabytes instead of 2) to my desktop, too.

Online. Almost every day, I stop in to Twitter (I’m @pogue) to post a link to my latest column, or, if I don’t have one, to post a joke of the day. I usually manage a Facebook visit, too, to see what’s going on in my social circle.

What else is on my bookmarks bar? NYTimes.com, Techmeme, Google Voice, my kids’ school homework assignments site, my blog and the local commuter train schedule site.

I’ve just moved my online photo galleries to SmugMug, for the reasons I wrote about in the Times today. I’m really excited; I feel as though MobileMe’s demise, in this regard, was good for me.

Noise-canceling headphones. In January, I reviewed the latest noise-canceling headphones — a must gadget for anyone who’s a passenger in planes, trains or automobiles. I wound up buying my favorite of the lot: the AKG K495 NC. Expensive, but holy fuselage, did I make the right call. These things pack down smaller than the rivals, sit so much more comfortably on the ears (six-hour flight? no problem), and block sound so much more effectively.

Laptop bag. Every time I leave the house, I carry a T.S.A.-friendly Timbuktu bag — meaning that its laptop compartment folds out for the airport X-ray so that I don’t have to remove the laptop. I originally raved about this bag, but with wear, I’ve found that it’s become side heavy. And the laptop compartment has lost its shape, meaning it takes two hands to slip the laptop inside. It might be time to move on.

Inside that bag and its pockets, here’s what you’ll find: laptop, charger and video-output adapter. Camera and charger. Three flash drives. Phone sync/charge cable. Those AKG headphones. Checkbook. Pens. Emergency reading glasses (these cool fold-up ones). Emergency bag of mixed nuts.

And there you go: the 2012 What Pogue Bought list. I know, I know — I’m a minimalist. But I’m working on it.

From AT&T to Virgin: How iPhone availability grows (inc. pre-paid iPhones)

See also:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405431,00.asp

From AT&T to Virgin: How iPhone availability grows

By The Associated Press

Since Verizon Wireless broke AT&T's exclusive grip on the iPhone last year, several other phone carriers now offer Apple's popular smartphone. Here's a look at how iPhone availability has expanded in the U.S.:

-- COMING TO NO. 1: AT&T Inc. was the only U.S. carrier offering the iPhone when the first model came out in 2007. It lost its exclusive status in February 2011 when Verizon Wireless, the nation's top wireless carrier, started selling the iPhone.

-- ANOTHER NATIONAL CARRIER: Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 carrier, also got the iPhone, starting in October with Apple Inc.'s introduction of the iPhone 4S. It also sells the iPhone 4 with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

-- REGIONAL OFFERING: C Spire Wireless, a small company that provides service in Mississippi and surrounding states, started selling the iPhone late last year. It bypassed larger carriers including T-Mobile USA and U.S. Cellular in getting the right to sell it. U.S. Cellular Corp. says it turned down the chance to sell the phone because it didn't want to spend a few hundred dollars per phone, as other carriers do, so customers can buy it at Apple's listed, subsidized price.

-- CHEAPER IPHONES: Several small, regional cellphone companies began selling the iPhone at prices that undercut the big carriers. For instance, the cost for a basic 4S model through those carriers is $150, which is $49 less than what national carriers charge. Carriers making this cheaper offering include NTelos Wireless of Virginia; Appalachian Wireless of Kentucky; and Alaska Communications, Matanuska Telephone Association and GCI of Alaska.

-- NO CONTRACTS: Leap Wireless International Inc., the parent of the Cricket cellphone service, will be the first mainland U.S. phone company to sell the latest iPhone models on a prepaid, no-contract basis, starting June 22. Open Mobile, which serves Puerto Rico, started selling no-contract, prepaid iPhones on May 18.

-- MORE NOW, LESS LATER: Virgin Mobile USA, one of Sprint's brands for prepaid, no-contract phone service, will start selling the iPhone on June 29. It will cost $549 for a basic model, higher than the $100 charged for Sprint-branded service. However, service will cost $30 a month and won't require a contract. Sprint charges $80 per month and requires a two-year contract. The Virgin Mobile customer can save nearly $800 over two years.