Webware

Tuesday CES and Macworld roundup: Beyond the iPhone

The mobile trend of this year's CES continued today as Steve Jobs' keynote at Macworld captured the spotlight with the announcement of yet another new mobile device--the iPhone. But there was other stuff going on, from new Google announcements to more news from the TV realm.

-- Motorola Q's new Pro incarnation. The hardware's the same, but the Motorola Q Pro has some software differences: virtual private network (VPN) support, a firewall, and data encryption, to name a few. As the name would imply, it's making the Q more friendly to the business crowd. (Crave)

-- … Read more

Yes, Virginia, there is an iPhone from Apple

Pinch yourself, Apple freaks. It's not a dream. The wide-screen, touch-enabled, media-playing iPod smart phone from Apple is here, and yes, it's called the iPhone. Read our play-by-play here.

Specs time:

Cingular, quad-band GSM/EDGE phone Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but no 3G 11.6mm thick: that's thinner than all those other anorexic smart phones 2-megapixel camera iPod connector, mic input, and speaker jack Proximity sensor: when it's close to your ear, the touch screen and display shut down "Smart" screen knows which way to orient images depending on how you hold it; widescreen playback … Read more

Macworld: Apple TV, more iTunes offerings, an iPhone with Google, and Yahoo partnerships

Fresh from Steve Jobs' mouth at his keynote address at the Macworld Expo are a whole host of announcements about new offerings from Apple. We're covering them all at our sister blog Crave, but here are a few highlights that are of particular interest to the world of webware:

The iTunes Store is expanding its movie offerings to include Paramount Pictures. This will include classics like Chinatown and more recent cult faves like Zoolander and School of Rock. iTunes--talk about one successful piece of webware. Apple TV in September. This is a box that will allow you to put … Read more

Yahoo buys MyBlogLog. So what?

You know, it's about time. It's been a while since one of Silicon Valley's big guys snapped up one of the Web's start-ups du jour--so long, in fact, that all sorts of wild and speculative rumors had started to swirl about which companies would inevitably be buying Digg and Facebook before 2006's end. Neither deal happened. But yesterday's uber-late-night reports from Forbes' Quentin Hardy and GigaOM's Om Malik have revealed that, as speculated, it looks likeYahoo has purchased the pseudo-social-networking service MyBlogLog for an undisclosed price, though it's rumored to be … Read more

Disney.com revamp coming, and not a moment too soon

Disney CEO Robert Iger took the stage at CES 2007 today for a keynote speech. His big pitch: There's a new Disney.com Web site on the way, with a video player front and center. That's a fitting move for the big media company, since it was one of the first to sell full-length content over the Internet, via iTunes.

Also to come: The site will try to divine what you want based on your age and gender. No more Little Mermaid pitches for you, Mr. Lost fan.

Disney is also trying to build a social network and … Read more

CareSquare: Babysitting 2.0

Babysitters scare me. The concept of giving my child over to the care of a young (usually) person I barely know is utterly terrifying. That's why word-of-mouth referrals are so important for child care. But talking to friends to find a sitter? That's old-fashioned.

A new site, CareSquare, is a social network and scheduling utility for parents, babysitters, and nannies. On this system, you can review babysitters' profiles and see reviews from the community at large or from other parents in your network.

More importantly, you can search for child care by date and time. This is the … Read more

Monday evening CES round-up: Year of mobile?

-- Skype on a cell phone. You don't need a Skype-only handset or a bulky laptop to use Skype while traveling. Nokia has a Skype client built-in on its new N800 series. The good news is you can get your hands on the handset right away; the bad news is you won't be able to use Skype on it until June (Crave).

-- Yahoo launches Go 2.0. This new tool combines several of Yahoo's brands into a single mobile app. Most important is the new search tool called OneSearch, which is optimized for mobile phones. There'… Read more

'You Don't Know Jack' is back

This has been out there for a while, but it just occurred to me that not enough people know about it: The awesome quiz game You Don't Know Jack is back. Sort of. Each weekday, the old JellyVision team posts one seven-question "Dis or Dat" sequence (for example, "Texting shorthand or Egyptian god?").

I'm waiting for the company to take all its old content and put it online. Some people like their fancy catapulting penguin games, but I'm happy with Jack, straight up.

Congoo makes paid content free

There's a deep, dark, hidden Web out there: the Web of paid content. You probably run across it from time to time when you click on a link to an interesting-looking story and find that you'll either need to pay a few bucks to read the story, or subscribe to the site to get access. You won't see the paid Web on Google or other search engines, though: it's not in their interest to show you what you can't have.

Congoo is one way to bypass the content toll-takers. The company has done deals with … Read more