This morning, I downloaded the latest major software update for the iPhone and iPod Touch — iOS 4 (renamed from iPhone OS). I’ve been playing with it all day on my iPhone 3GS, testing the new features and exploring how it performs and what it can do. I have an extensive run though, some thoughts and impressions, and some useful tips.

iOS 4 is available now for all iPhone 3G and 3GS users, though original iPhone users have been left out and iPad users won’t get it for a few months. To get it, you just need to plug your iPhone into your computer and hit update, but if you don’t have iTunes 9.2 yet you’ll have to upgrade to that version first.

Let’s run through things one at a time:

General Impressions

It’s fast. Rather, on the 3GS the new OS is noticeably snappier than the previous version (3.1.1). Icons seem to fly around and I haven’t run into any noticeable lag, even when running many apps in the background (which I’ll get to below). That said, reports from users of the iPhone 3G are that the new software is not any faster on that device, but it isn’t purported to be any slower either.

It’s pretty. Not only can you select a background wallpaper for the homescreen (you can check mine out in the post image), but the look of the dock has changed to more closely resemble the one in Mac OS X and some of the icons (notably the calculator) have been made a little more attractive. iPhone 3G users are apparently not able to set their own homescreen wallpaper, but it should be noted that these changes are purely cosmetic.

Multitasking

It’s the big, headline feature of iOS 4, and so far it seems to work as advertised. Multitasking allows apps (or rather, specific features of apps) to run in the background while you are doing other things on the phone. For instance, I can listen to a station on Pandora while surfing the internet, or answer a phone call while using a GPS app without losing my guidance. Apps have to be specifically updated to run in the background, so many or most of your non-Apple apps won’t work in the background right off the bat. The first thing to do after updating to iOS 4 is to hit up the app store to see which of your apps have updates and download them, so you can take advantage of the new features right away. It should also be noted that iPhone 3G users won’t get multitasking – apparently the 3G doesn’t have the processing power to handle it.

How multitasking works: When you hit the home button and the part of an app that supports multitasking is running, it will stay running. So, if you’re listening to a song in Pandora, or are getting GPS voice guidance, and hit the home button, it will keep playing (whereas before it would cut out), even if you open other apps. Other apps that don’t actually have something going in the background will ‘freeze’ in place, so that when you open them up they should be in the exact same place they were before you froze them. This means that you can browse the web a little, go check your email, and come back to Safari without fear that you’ve lost your webpage. For that matter, you could start a page loading in the background while you go and check something else.

To see which apps are frozen or running in the background, you double click the home button. This brings up the app switcher, which pops up from the bottom of the screen and shows you the icons for those apps. Clicking an icon takes you directly into the app — this means you can move from one app to another without having to bounce to the home screen first. If you have more than four apps open, swiping to the right will take you to the rest of them. In my experience, once you open an app for the first time it will appear in the app switcher, with the apps most recently being those furthest left.

A few app switcher tips:

Swiping left on the app switcher will provide playback controls for whatever music player you are currently using/were using most recently (such as iPod or Pandora). You will also find an icon there for locking the screen orientation into portrait mode, which could be useful in some instances.

Multitasking performance is remarkably good. Switching apps happens really fast (with a neat little animation), and streaming music in the background did not seem to affect the performance of other apps. In fact, even as I opened more and more apps, I did not notice the phone slowing down at all. Now, I haven’t had the chance to use a really heavy duty app, such as a turn by turn GPS program, but so far the phone has handled everything I’ve thrown at it.

The other big question is battery life. It’s too early for me to tell if running all these apps in the background has really affected the phone’s longevity, since it’s spent most of the day plugged into the computer getting updated.

Folders

Users can now group the applications into “folders”, which allows them to name them under a shared icon. Clicking the icon (which is a box containing a grid of the apps it contains) opens the folder and lets you click any of the apps it contains. To create a folder, you hold and drag one icon onto another, and name it. For some reason, there seems to be a limit of 12 apps per folder, which I found a little annoying. Also, and this is my opinion, the folder icons do not look nearly as good or distinctive as most of the application icons they’re replacing, which can leave your screen looking boring and make it hard to quickly find what you’re looking for.

iBooks

iOS 4 grants the iPhone access to Apple’s ebook reader and store, iBooks. iBooks isn’t automatically included on the phone – you must go into the app store and download it yourself (it’s free). It comes with one book — Winnie the Pooh — and using the built-in store you can buy many, many more. If you have iBooks on the iPad, logging on will automatically sync your library (including your notes, bookmarks, and current location in the books) between the two devices. I will do an entire post with my impressions of the iBooks software — look for it in the next day or so.

Email

Many people are really excited about the new email features, which include threaded email (like you see in Gmail) and a unified email inbox for users with multiple email accounts. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to use those features since I only have one email account and don’t like threading, but they reportedly work as advertised.

Lots More Tips

Zoom in the Camera: The camera now has a 5x digital zoom. To use it, tap once on the screen while in the camera app, and you’ll see a zoom slider which will let you move in and out. It should be noted that with a digital zoom, you’re not actually zooming in. You’re essentially doing the same thing as cropping the image on the computer — moving in on a portion of what’s being picked up by the image sensor and blowing it up, which will detract from the quality of the image.

There are lots of other small changes to iOS 4. For instance, you can now search your SMS messages using a search bar at the top, use a longer alpha-numeric password to lock your phone, and tether your phone to your laptop once you set up your plan to allow for it with AT&T. I have not gotten to try all these features yet, but several of the ones that I have not touched on can be found at this fairly comprehensive Gizmodo post.

Wrap Up

So far, iOS 4 has more than lived up to its promise. Multitasking, folders, and all the other improvements seem to work, and work well. Moreover, performance is quick (at least on the 3GS), and I have not had the phone freeze, crash, or even stutter in the one day I’ve been using it.

My only gripe is that the iPhone 3G is getting a watered-down version of the OS, and the original iPhone has been left out entirely (despite having the same processor as the 3G). I get that Apple wants people to upgrade to the latest hardware, but it seems unfair to their loyal customers who just want to hold on to their still-functioning phones.

Nevertheless, I feel like my phone has a lot more utility and functionality than it did this time yesterday, and to that I can only give a big thumbs up.

Related Posts:

• Article: Apple’s Next iPhone
• Apple’s Long-Term Strategy for the iPad
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions

About a month ago, I posted my last ever article for the Occidental Weekly, a piece about the then unannounced iPhone 4. However, that wasn’t my original idea for my last college newspaper article ever–I had wanted to go out with a bang. My idea was to write a wide-spanning piece about where consumer technology is heading, and offer some concrete advice that readers could use going forward. Unfortunately, that article wasn’t able to get printed in the paper, but I did ultimately write it, and there’s no better place to publish it than right here. Here it is:

In the last four years, there have been astronomical changes in technology. Back in the stone age–2006–nobody had an iPhone, having a flat screen TV was a big deal, and if you used the word “tweet” people would have thought that you were crazy. The idea that you could browse the internet from your phone–or have your mom friend you on Facebook–seemed like a ridiculous impossibility.

Technology is going to keep on changing in new and hard to predict ways, but it is possible to look ahead at what’s coming down the pipeline, and to be ready to adopt or accommodate things as they come. This is my take on where things are trending, and what these changes will mean for consumers.

Ebooks:

Ebooks are going to become mainstream–there are too many big companies with too much money behind ebook efforts for them to fail. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and even Apple have all gotten into the ebook game. Publishers have the opportunity to avoid the printing costs on books, and electronics companies want to get paid to sell something that costs practically nothing to deliver, so the draw of ebooks to these firms is clear.

The advantages of ebooks for consumers seem obvious–readers can carry thousands of books with them on one device, look words up in the dictionary on the spot, and search the text of the book for the phrase they’re looking for. The problem is, no ebook reader experience really matches that of a physical book. Furthermore, the various and companies each have their own ebook stores that don’t work on their competitor’s devices. For instance, if you buy a book from Amazon’s Kindle store, you won’t be able to view it on any non-Kindle software.

Savvy consumers should wait to see how things play out and which ebook formats and readers become dominant. Otherwise, they risk getting locked into a company’s system that may not survive in the long term, and lose their books in the process. Alternatively, consumers can seek out ebooks that are free from copy protection and are in open formats like pdf or epub that most (but not all) ebook readers can display. Websites like Project Gutenburg feature thousands of out of copyright works (such as books by Jane Austen, James Joyce, and H.G. Wells) for free in these formats.

3D:

Now that everybody has upgraded to HDTVs, here comes 3D to get you to buy a new TV all over again. The very first 3D TVs are just starting to come out, and content is coming later this year, including 3D Blu-Rays (which will require a new Blu-Ray player), 3D videogaming on the Playstation 3, a 3D ESPN channel, and 3D movie channels on DirecTV. The problem is nobody seems certain whether people are willing to wear glasses to watch their TV.

Without glasses, 3D content is blurry and unwatchable, which means that users must be willing to wear the glasses, and will need to buy enough glasses for everyone who would possibly need one. Imagine having a movie watching party and needing to worry about having enough pairs of glasses to go around. Different companies use different glasses technology (though fortunately the TVs all take the same 3D inputs), and many of them are expensive (think $150 for a pair). Further, some people have issues with glasses-based 3D, complaining of eye strain or headaches. All this makes me wonder whether 3D will catch on with mainstream buyers in the near term.

If you have a lot of money, there’s no reason not to go 3D now (in the worst case 3D TVs can act like regular HDTVs), but for everyone else the best idea is probably to wait to see if this technology takes off. 3D will only get better as time passes, and prices should drop as it does. The tipping point will come when the TVs can deliver an experience so compelling and immersive that it is worth the tradeoffs of the glasses for most people. I think that day will come, but we’ll have to see how long it takes to get to that point.

Phones as Computers:

Phones today are as powerful as desktop computers were just a few years ago, with gigahertz processors and hundreds of megabytes of RAM. Phones are able to do more and more of the tasks that were previously only the domain of full computers, such as surfing the full internet, creating Excel Spreadsheets, or editing HD video.

Things are only going to keep going further in this direction as the phone moves to being not only the primary communication device, but also the primary computing device in people’s lives. Already, the new iPhone operating system has been revealed with the ability to run multiple programs simultaneously, and the forthcoming Windows 7 phones will have a desktop-like Microsoft Office suite and can play games on Xbox Live.

This is probably the most fast moving area in tech right now, and phones are going to keep doing more and more astounding things. One of the most cutting edge of these is something called augmented reality. Augmented reality applications use the phone’s camera and GPS to present a live view of the things around you with a layer of information on top of it. For instance, it can show you what the buildings around you are, or the subway lines beneath your feet. They have the potential to provide literally anything you would want to know about the things around you.

The rapid innovation in phones means that they are becoming obsolete more and more quickly, which is frustrating since most cell phone buyers are only eligible for an upgrade every two years (you can buy a phone when not eligible, but it typically costs hundreds of dollars more). But, all this innovation does mean that we’ll soon be carrying devices in our pockets that will be able to do pretty much anything we can think of, and that is really exciting.

Related Posts:

• Apple’s Long Term Strategy for the Ipad
• Article: How Publishers Can Make Electronic Textbooks Successful
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions

A few weeks ago, I gave my initial impressions of the iPad. To quickly sum up my view, I said that the iPad doesn’t make sense in its current incarnation — that it does less than an iPhone, costs more, and definitely can’t fit in a pocket. If you’re going to be carrying around a bag anyway, you might as well throw a netbook in there, since they are less expensive, more capable, and get equal (or better) battery life.

What I didn’t qualify in the article however was that “in its current incarnation” part. You see, I think that this first generation iPad is just the tip of the iceberg. Apple has some big, big plans for the iPad. Remember, they’re trying to create a whole new third category of computing. This is what I actually think is going to happen with the iPad over the long-term:

1. Early adopters are going to pay up front in order for Apple to get the price down and make improvements.
This isn’t saying anything new or revolutionary. Apple always lowers the prices of its products after a while. However, I think that this could be a situation more akin to the price drop of the first generation iPhone, when Apple slashed $200 dollars off the price after only two months (though they wouldn’t be as quick and drastic about it this time, to avoid a repeat of the customer backlash from that move).

Apple knows that they have a number of die-hard customers who will buy whatever they put out right away, and because of this they can charge a premium for their products at launch. In a way, it’s a form of price discrimination, and the revenue from the early adopters helps them achieve greater economies of scale to bring down their costs.

Apple has to realize that it will be hard for them to sell a lot of iPads to price-sensitive people when there are so many competitors and that netbooks appear to be a better value. Because of this, it can’t be too long until they drop the price down to netbook levels (but they can never bring it down to iPhone or iPod Touch levels, because they need to keep the iPad distinct as a third category between phones and laptops).

2. Apple left a lot of features off the iPad both to keep the price low and to save things for future iterations of the product. Wait a generation or two, and the iPad will have all the things that people have been clamoring for.
That 9.7 inch capacitive touch screen is an expensive component. There’s a reason we haven’t really seen large capacitive screens on devices before now — capacitive touch technology gets really pricey as screen sizes go up. The technology will obviously get cheaper over time, but Apple needed the iPad to come in at a reasonable price point now, so that meant cutting costs where possible.

As part of this, Apple is producing the chips for the iPad themselves, which will save a lot of money in the long run (and also makes sense since they can build the chip specifically for the device). Apple also left off a lot of basic features, such as a camera.

Macs, the iPhone, and even the iPod Nano all have cameras — it almost seems weird for an Apple product not to have one these days. The iPhone OS obviously already supports cameras and, if they can engineer a camera into the Nano, they can definitely find a place to put one (or more) on the iPad. This is especially perplexing, because there are so many compelling uses for a camera on the iPad, first among them video calling.

There can only be two reasons for its omission — either it pushed the cost too high, or they want to save it for the next generation to differentiate it and get people to upgrade. Chances are that both are true.

What this means is that all those features people have been clamoring for are likely coming in future generations of the iPad. Remember the first-gen iPhone? It had a camera that couldn’t shoot video, no 3G, no GPS chip, no app store, no MMS, and no copy and paste, to name just a few things. It gained all these features incrementally. People were disappointed with the iPhone at first, and now they call it revolutionary.

The same thing is going to happen with the iPad. A front facing camera, a proper GPS chip, and yes, multitasking will all eventually show up on the iPad (and possibly on the iPhone as well). Apple will just space out its rollout of these features to provide a compelling upgrade path for its customers.

(That said, I’m not sure if and when Adobe Flash will ever make its way onto the iPhone or iPad. Apple really seems to hate Flash. However, once Flash starts making its way onto all the other smartphone platforms, it may be hard for Apple to holdout.)

3. To quote Walt Mossberg: “It’s all about the software, stupid.” Once the iPad gets some really unique, compelling software — and it will — it can transform into the must-have third device that Apple’s hoping it can be.
Apple already reworked some of their standard iPhone OS software for the larger screen, but it’s arguable if any of these changes are providing a new and unique experience. Sure, it’s nice to be able to view the list of your emails alongside the messages or browse the web on a screen that can display the entire webpage, but using the email app or the browser is really not that different from using it on the iPhone. Both email and web are still going to be better on a full blown computer, especially with the lack of Flash on the iPad. The reworked app that comes closest to providing a radically new experience is the photo app, which looks a lot more like iPhoto than the iPhone photo app, and seems to utilize pinching and zooming really well.

It’s only a matter of time until some really compelling software is coded specifically for the iPad to take advantage of what it has to offer. Apple already announced its first attempts at this, iBooks and the with the iWork suite for the iPad.

There’s not much to say about iBooks. Apple recognizes that the iPad is the right size for an ebook reader, and has coded a fancy app to take advantage of that fact. The question will come down how the ebook experience on the iPad stacks up against other ebook readers, especially dedicated ones like the Kindle or the Nook. Really, iBooks is less about creating a new unique experience with the iPad as it is trying to match and surpass the ebook experience found elsewhere.

Of all the things announced recently by Apple, iWork for the iPad baffles me the most. The iPad is clearly a device meant for consuming content, not creating it. It’s portable, has a high-res screen, and has great media software, but what it doesn’t have is easy ways to enter information. The virtual keyboard looks problematic, especially since it apparently requires that the user use two hands, and it will be hard to see the screen if you’re putting the iPad down flat on a table to type on it. Sure, Apple will sell a dock with a built-in keyboard, but I don’t know how many people are going to want to carry that around, and it defeats the purpose of having the iPad as a portable take-anywhere device. So, for Apple’s first real software for the iPad to be focused on creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations doesn’t make any sense. These uses play to the iPad’s weak suits. Perhaps Apple thought that the software would allow business users to talk themselves into getting iPads, or would sway the person who needs to create the occasional document away from a netbook.

Still, even with Apple’s seeming misstep of focusing on iWork instead of more compelling software, it has an ace in the hole — it’s app developer community. Any iPhone app can be used on the iPad already, but once developers start coding specifically for the iPad, it’ll only be a matter of time until they come up with some really exciting and original software. There are so many possibilities, and I’m sure the best haven’t even been thought up yet. Ideas I’ve heard include medical apps that doctors and patients can use to run tests and access patient histories, remote desktop apps that allow users to log in and run their home computers from the iPad, and magazine reader apps so good they’ll save the industry. This unique software experience is what will make the iPad a “must-have” device.

Apple has laid the groundwork — they’ve built great-looking hardware and created the fundamentals that users and developers needed. Now, it’s up to Apple’s developer community to create the software that will ultimately get mainstream people to accept a third device. Apple has so many great iPhone developers — and so many people hoping to become rich off the app store — that I have no doubt they’ll do it. I’m just excited to see what they come up with.

Related Posts:

• The Apple iPad: Impressions and Analysis
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions
• Article: Kindle Textbooks — Are Universities Going to Lead the Way to a ‘Paperless Society’?

In an article for the Occidental Weekly, I look at Microsoft’s recently announced Windows Phone 7 Series, which does something unique — integrates Xbox Live into the cell phone. Here’s the article lead:

As a generation, we are fixated on “converged devices” such as iPhones and Blackberries that not only function as cell phones but as mp3 players, internet browsers and GPSs. In order to really succeed in the market, companies are constantly competing to create the phone with the most useful apps and most advanced features. In 2010, Microsoft is set to take phone utility and innovation to a whole new level. Last week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, the largest international trade show for cellular phones, Microsoft unveiled its plans for an unprecedented combination: a cell phone with Xbox gaming capabilities.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

Is the Apple iPad a game changer… or will it ruin Apple’s hot streak? In an article for the Occidental Weekly, I give my impressions of Apple’s latest “magical” device. Here’s the article lead:

Last Wednesday, Apple unveiled the iPad, a top-secret product that they have been working on for years. Tech-lovers across the globe eagerly awaited this unveiling only to be disappointed: Apple’s latest innovation is… a giant iPhone.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

I offer tips and tricks for getting most out of Gmail in an article for the Occidental Weekly. Many businesses and schools (including Oxy) have been switching over to Gmail, and Google’s email interface can take a little getting used to. This guide should help make the transition a little easier, and provide knowledge that will be helpful to all Gmail users. Here’s the article lead:

The Gmail interface is different from most other e-mail programs, and it can take a little getting used to. But if you take the time to learn the tricks and nuances of Gmail, it can prove to be a quick and efficient program. Whether you’re using Gmail reluctantly or lovingly, these tips should help make dealing with your Oxy e-mail (or any Gmail account) easier.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

Below is an article that I originally wrote for BNET about a switch in the way that radio audiences are measured. It’s a huge change in the industry, and I discuss what it means for stations and advertisers:

The way that radio ratings are determined — and therefore the way that advertisers buy radio — has been changing. Arbitron, the company that calculates ratings for radio stations in different markets, is gradually shifting from a diary based system — where people are expected to remember and record their radio listening habits — to a system based on a device that they call the Personal People Meter (PPM).

The Personal People Meter is a beeper-sized device that picks up any audible radio-encoded transmission, stores that information, and sends it to Arbitron. People enlisted by Arbitron carry these around with them at all times, so their radio listening habits can be recorded and observed.

Arbitron already has PPM set up in 20 of the nations largest radio markets [warning: PDF link]. This summer, PPM will launch in five more markets — Baltimore, Denver-Boulder, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Tampa-St. Petersburg — and eight will be added in the fall.

PPM metering has a big advantage over the diary method because it’s a passive system rather than an active one. This means that it doesn’t rely on people actively remembering and recording their listening habits, and isn’t dependent on them being truthful. While there still are errors, at least they’re not human errors.

The problem with passive devices like the PPM is that they’re going to pick up radio that the wearer isn’t even listening to. Imagine shopping at a mall where they are playing radio background music — the device will pick it up as radio listening, even if the wearer hasn’t paid the music any attention.

Passive devices can sometimes lead to a situation where the listening picked up might not actually represent the listeners’ true preferences. This is especially true with listeners under the age of 16, since they are often in the car but do not have control of the radio dial.

One other concern is that the PPM only measures the listening habits of those individuals who are actually willing to carry around a black beeper-sized device with them around all day. PPM has shown that more males listen to the radio than females. Arbitron has said that this is likely because men spend more time commuting and in their cars — but critics say that women just don’t want to be seen carrying the PPM device.

Despite these shortcomings, PPM is becoming the new standard, and it is upon PPM numbers that new ad buys will be based. It has caused major shakeups in a lot of the markets into which it has been introduced.

Many predicted that certain types of radio — for instance rock stations — would benefit while other genres suffered. The reality is that each market is different and that no one type of station has necessarily benefited or suffered across the board. The stations that have really been hurt by the new system are those that have a cult following. Stations with a broader appeal but less vocal listeners have benefited.

PPM has shown that compared to diaries people listen for shorter periods of time than they say they do, and to more stations. People would record large blocks of time spent listening to their favorite stations in their diaries, but the PPM device revealed that people don’t listen for as long as they say and they flip around a lot more than they claim to.

The genre of these stations was different in each market — in some places it’s a talk radio station, in others an urban or R&B station, and in others Spanish language radio. But, a lot of stations suddenly found their place in the rankings drop precipitously overnight.

It’s worth noting that radio audiences for these stations haven’t changed — just the way that they are measured has. An advertiser who is advertising on one of these stations should be getting about the same number of listeners, and therefore the same results as before. Still, the drop in the rankings is a huge blow for these stations going forward.

Related Posts:

• Should Your Interns Manage Your Twitter Account?
• Will Google Kill the GPS Market?
• How Publishers Can Make Electronic Textbooks Successful

What do newspapers, music companies, and makers of portable navigation devices like TomTom and Garmin all have in common? They have the same problem — someone is willing to give their product away for free.

In the case of the first two, it has brought about the expectation that these goods and services ought to be free (which is part of the reason that newspapers around the country are failing and the U.S. is so deficient in quality journalism, but that’s another story). In the case of navigation devices, that expectation isn’t here yet, but the GPS and portable navigation device (PND) makers will need to act quickly to make sure it doesn’t happen.

This situation for PND makers comes from Google’s announcement today that they are going to include free navigation software in the forthcoming 2.0 version of their Android OS for mobile phones, which is expected to launch across many new phones in the coming months (starting with the Motorola Droid for Verizon). That’s a lot of phones that are going to have free GPS navigation software, but this by itself isn’t the scariest part for companies like Garmin, TomTom, and Magellan. It’s the (plausible) speculation that Google will shortly bring their software to all the other phone platforms on which Google Maps is already available, such as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and others. If people can get spoken turn by turn navigation on their phones for free — especially if they’re phones that they were already going to buy anyway — PND companies are going to have a hard time persuading people to dish out the cash to buy a dedicated navigation unit (or pay $99 for something like the TomTom software for the iPhone).

To make matters worse, the Google software looks pretty good. Great, actually. It’s still in beta, but it already incorporates a lot of features that PND companies charge premiums for, like text-to-speech (reading street names aloud), advising you which lane to be in, real-time traffic, and voice control. Plus, it includes data from Google’s satellite imagery and street view. You can see what the streets and terrain around your route actually look like (helpful for when you’re dealing with unmarked streets or unusual intersections), and it will show you each of your turns in street view so you know what the corner or off-ramp will look like before you get there. When you get to your destination, you can compare the street view image to what you’re actually seeing to make sure you are in the right place.

There is one major drawback to Google’s software. It doesn’t store all your maps on the device; instead, it downloads them as you go. This is fine as long as you have a good signal, but if you drive somewhere in the middle of nowhere without WiFi or a cellular signal, you could find yourself without directions. Google claims that the device will cache information on the device for the route you currently have programmed in, which should help if you’re driving through areas of intermittent or spotty coverage, but not if you’re in an extended coverage-less area. To be fair, most places people drive have cellular coverage, but PNDs and most dedicated GPS software have all of the maps and point of interest information on the device’s hard drive, so all you need to keep going is a GPS signal.

Google’s software is a game changer. It’s impossible to compete on price when your competition isn’t charging anything*. Suddenly, starting today, PND companies are going to have to work really hard — and possibly do something drastic — to stay in the game. Otherwise, the standalone GPS unit could go the way of the Palm Pilot, and Google will own yet another market.

*Google is planning to make money by advertising within their navigation software. Garmin or TomTom simply can’t hope to serve up ads like Google can, and this model further increases Google’s incentive to get their app on as many phones as possible.

Related Posts:

• Article: Motorola CLIQ Redefines “Connection”
• Get Around Those Pesky Attachment Size Limits
• Skype Releases iPhone Client

Eventually, social networking on phones is going to keep us constantly connected with all of our friends in real time. In an article I wrote this week for the Occidental Weekly, I talk about an upcoming phone from Motorola—the CLIQ—that will take us several steps closer to that reality. Here’s the article lead:

I am connected to all my friends right now. I’m also connected to them when I’m in the quad or on top of Mt. Fiji. That’s because I’ve got all my social networks – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn – on my phone.

I cannot say whether or not it’s a good thing to be connected to everyone all the time, nor do I know what the larger implications are for a society that revolves around being constantly connected. But what I do know is this – it’s what people want.

The consumer electronics companies know this too. Motorola is hoping that it will save their butts.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

In an article published in this week’s Occidental Weekly, I look at Apple’s new iPod lineup. Apple added very little to their devices… but they can now compete in some crazy new areas. Here’s the article lead:

Apparently, your iPod can do anything. At least that is what Apple is saying about their new iPod lineup, which they announced Wednesday, Sept. 9. What’s interesting about Apple’s keynote–besides the fact that Steve Jobs is back with a brand new kidney and still looks too thin–is that despite giving all the iPods boring, incremental updates, iPods are now starting to compete in several new markets.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.