Gmail has long had keyboard shortcuts, though learning them can be difficult. Enter the Gboard, a specialized mini-keyboard for Google's e-mail service. It debuts this Friday at an asking price of $19.99.
The Gboard consists of 19 colored keys set in a standard size numpad-only keyboard. Clicking on any one of these performs that particular keyboard shortcut. Included are Gmail-specific features such as starring messages, starting a search, and jumping between message threads. Outside of Gmail they simply act as normal keyboard buttons, and will type in whatever letter or number corresponds with that shortcut.
The device is powered by USB and requires no special software or drivers, however users need to first enable keyboard shortcuts within Gmail's settings before using it. Also worth noting is that it was created not by Google, but by Charlie Mason, a film producer from Venice, Calif. This is his first foray into the computer hardware business.
The Gboard consists of 19 keys, all of which act as shortcuts within Google's Gmail Web mail service.
(Credit: James Martin / CNET)This really is a product that users will either love or hate. Those who have mastered Gmail's shortcuts will see little need to buy special hardware and find a spare USB port to plug it into. Meanwhile, newbie users may be unwilling to take the plunge on such a specific peripheral for a program that works only within another program (the browser). The Gboard runs the risk of being an unappealing prospect to both parties.
It's also not the first attempt at easing the process of learning and remembering shortcuts. This time last year Google offered users a free pack of color-coded shortcut stickers that could be tacked onto any keyboard. There have also long been specialized keyboards for video and audio editing as well as graphical design--all of which provide similar, color-coded keys. Users who don't want to commit, or tack stickers on their keyboard, also have the option of buying a silicone keyboard mat, though no such thing has been created for Gmail.
Considering there are a total of 69 Gmail shortcuts (with more on the way if Google graduates some of its experimental features from its labs section) the Gboard could just be the first step toward creating a full-size (100 plus key) version. In the meantime, its early December release and low price tag make for a good stocking stuffer if you've got a Gmail lover in your family.
The good:
• No setup required
• Color coding is logical and makes it easy to learn the keys
• Good build quality and feel; keys are flat like on a laptop
• At $19.99 it's not that expensive. Most numeric-only keyboards cost about the same.
The bad:
• Does not come close to including all of Gmail's shortcuts
• Could be rendered less useful if Gmail's shortcuts change
• Only comes in one color (black)
Onetime social-networking pioneer Friendster unveiled a new design on Thursday, and it's focusing on the demographic that has kept it afloat for the past few years: the Asian youth market. And according to Reuters, Friendster may also be sold to a buyer in Asia by the end of the month for at least $100 million.
Yes, Friendster still exists. The first big social network to take off, it was surpassed by the likes of MySpace and Facebook, and its popularity in much of the world quickly faded. Now, it says it has 75 million registered users (no word on how many are active), and that 90 percent of its traffic comes from the Asia-Pacific region. It started offering translated versions of the site two years ago.
New to the revamped Friendster are a suite of features designed to capitalize on the social-gaming craze: a virtual currency, an array of games, and virtual gifts.
Friendster CEO Richard Kimber confirmed to Reuters that the company was shopping itself to buyers, and that investment bank Morgan Stanley had been hired to handle the sale and that the company is working with "a shortlist" of potential suitors. It won't be the first time it's been looking to sell: CNET reported in 2005 that investment bank Montgomery & Co. had been hired for the same purpose.
Kimber, a former Googler, joined Friendster last year right around the same time that it raised $20 million in venture funding in a round led by IDG Ventures.
Zynga, the social-gaming developer behind the wildly popular Facebook game FarmVille, announced on Thursday that it has launched a new game for the social network, this one called PetVille. The news was originally reported on the Games.com blog.
According to the company, PetVille allows Facebook users to "raise, dress, and care for a pet" that they've created. Gamers can also visit friends' in-game houses and "play with their pets to earn coins you can use to make your own house the coolest on the block!"
Although PetVille's userbase pales in comparison to Zynga's FarmVille, which currently has almost 70 million active users, the game has already added 125 gamers as of this writing and more than 400 people have become fans of the title. Considering the popularity of Zynga's other games, it's likely that PetVille will enjoy the same kind of success.
If you're a FarmVille fan or you just like playing games on social networks, you can check out PetVille by clicking here.
See also: Facebook games to hold you over until Civilization Network
Coca-Cola on Thursday launched a facial-matching Facebook application called the Coke Zero Facial Profiler.
As long as users have at least three photos of themselves in their Facebook profile, the application searches across other pictures from Facebook users that have used the app to find someone whose face matches theirs most accurately. Those that don't have three images can either upload a picture into the app from their desktop or capture a picture from their Webcam.
I had a chance to use the app this afternoon. After it is added to your profile, you can immediately direct it to find pictures in your profile. That process takes a little longer than I would have liked, but it wasn't so bad that I wanted to move on.
The Coke Zero Facial Profiler.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)To match up my face to someone else's, I took a picture with my Web cam. After I chose the picture I wanted to use, the app asked me to drag my image to match the shadowed outline of a head. I also needed to move markers over my eyes to ensure that the application was reading my image correctly.
My only issue with Coca-Cola's facial-matching app is that it took too long to find a match. I realize that it's searching through several faces to find the right person, but the experience left me wishing that it would end sooner than it did.
After finding a match (the app said it was a 60 percent fit), I was given the option of connecting with the person I matched up with. It was a nice option, but I was unsure how that conversation would go--"So, you don't know me, but our faces are about 60 percent alike. Wanna be friends?"--so I opted against it.
Overall, Coca-Cola's app is worth trying out once or twice, even if just for a laugh. But until more people try it out, and their images are added to the database, I'm just not sure that it has the kind of lasting power so many other apps on the social network have. I would come back to it in a month or two to see if the matching can improve, though.
An e-mail was sent on Thursday to Facebook users who were members at the time that its controversial, now-defunct Beacon advertising program was operated: it's the official notice about the proposed settlement for the class-action lawsuit against Beacon. The terms of the settlement have been public since September, but the court-ordered summary notice is the last step in the process before final approval on February 26.
"This is not a settlement in which class members file claims to receive compensation," the notice explained (possibly crushing the hopes of any Facebook members who might have got excited that this would be an easy way to make some pizza money). "Under the proposed settlement, Facebook will terminate the Beacon program. In addition, Facebook will provide $9.5 million to establish an independent nonprofit foundation that will identify and fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security."
A Web site has been set up to explain the terms of the settlement for the case Lane et al. vs. Facebook Inc. et al., which was originally filed last summer.
Beacon, an advertising program that shared members' activity on participating third-party sites on their Facebook profiles without much warning or notification, was a much-hyped part of the Facebook Ads initiative that debuted in the fall of 2007. But it was, unfortunately for Facebook, a complete public relations disaster.
Pressure from privacy and activist groups resulted in notable changes to the product and member controls thereof, but image repair proved to not be enough and Facebook let Beacon fade to black.
In a nod to efficiency, YouTube on Thursday began testing a more lightweight version of its video player pages called "feather."
Feather pages do a number of things to speed up the video-playing process, from defaulting to the standard quality version (instead of high quality or high definition), to removing various on-page features such as being able to control the size and coloring of an embed. The idea is to get the video playing as soon as possible with fewer on-page distractions.
Other efficiencies include limiting the number of loaded comments to just 10, which users are now unable to vote on or respond to. Video replies, real-time sharing, and auto-suggest from YouTube's search bar have also been cut. However, related videos remain--albeit at a more limited 5 videos compared to YouTube's usual offering of 21.
Users who want to try out the new interface can do so by opting in to it on YouTube's TestTube page, which houses experimental, or otherwise not-so-ready-for-primetime features. These include YouTube's visual warp browser, its live streams product, and comment search tool. Once it's enabled, it can quickly be disabled from any video page with a little green box that sits on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
It's worth noting the feature does not yet appear to work on all videos just yet. We had the best luck on popular videos, including those from YouTube's featured section. Also, if you're a YouTube power user who regularly makes use of things such as video replies and user comments, it's worth staying on the standard version of the service.
Below you can see a before and after of feather mode on the same video. Click it to enlarge.
YouTube's new feather mode ditches many of YouTube's advanced features in favor of a faster-loading page.
(Credit: CNET)
Just a few days ahead of the scheduled public beta launch of media app Boxee on Monday, the excellent Clicker Internet video directory has been ported to the platform.
To review: Boxee is a media viewing app designed for living room use--that is, at a distance, with a remote control. It's a good interface for sources like YouTube, Netflix, CNN, and CBS (our publisher), as well as music, home movies, and photos. We've covered it a lot and quite like it.
Clicker, which we also like, is an extremely well-curated directory of streaming television shows. Clicker on Boxee is that directory on the Boxee platform, and also designed for control from a remote. It works very well. The Clicker service and Boxee appear made for each other.
Clicker on Boxee gives users a nice big interface for browsing shows.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Unfortunately, Clicker on Boxee doesn't have access to the entire Clicker database, which is a big disappointment. In particular, Hulu was removed as an official Boxee content partner earlier this year, so Clicker, which indexes Hulu just fine on its Web interface, won't display Hulu episodes when run on Boxee. Boxee itself has a workaround that shows Hulu content despite the licensing issues, but it's not the full, authorized interface that Boxee used to have, and Clicker doesn't have access to those shows. So if you're on Boxee and want to see a show that's on Hulu, you have to leave Clicker, fire up the Hulu Feeds module, and search for it there.
One of Boxee's other issues at the moment is that there are nearly 40 different content sources that it can view, and several have unique interfaces and search functions. Clicker may be able to find a lot of video content, but it can't find all of it, and if you use Boxee you might have to know which network or service a show is on to find it if it's not on Clicker. Hopefully the upcoming open beta of Boxee, which is said to feature a new interface, will address this issue. We'll have a report on the new version of the app, and how Clicker works inside it, when it launches.
The search function is also designed to be used with a remote control.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Microsoft engineers should get a pat on the back from the suits at Microsoft HQ (shown here): Bing Maps Beta is cool.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft's Bing took a major step forward Wednesday in adding rich mapping and image data to its search engine, but until it assembles more data, pretty pictures aren't enough to beat the Google Maps juggernaut.
Bing Maps Beta was released during a presentation at Microsoft's offices here. It's a Silverlight-based application that runs inside Bing Maps and adds Microsoft's version of Google Street View--called Streetside--to Bing Maps, as well as enhanced "bird's eye" images that let you swoop over cities.
I spent some quality time Wednesday afternoon with the new Bing Maps Beta, zooming through the streets of San Francisco and New York and testing out various searches. The best part about Bing Maps Beta--by far--are the rich transitions between high-resolution street-level or bird's-eye view photos as you move around a city, making it feel like you're actually driving down the road.
Microsoft's Streetside cameras have yet to make it down Amphitheater Parkway to Google's headquarters, and still haven't mapped an awfully large portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, not to mention the heartland.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Unfortunately, that's also the worst part; you'll have to download Microsoft Silverlight to make the rich imagery come alive (although you can still use Bing Maps without it), and 10 minutes of poking around with the application put a noticeable drain on system resources. If I left the window open, but didn't do anything in Bing Maps, my activity monitor dropped back to a moderate pace, only to max out again once I started playing with the Streetside feature or scrolling around a map.
But what Microsoft has assembled is impressive. The images are high-quality, and the location fixes are quite precise. The bird's-eye views have been improved with more perspective on roads hidden by buildings and name prominent buildings right on the map.
Scrolling around a city in bird's-eye view also allows you to view geotagged picture galleries created with Microsoft Photosynth. Click the little blue Streetside man (Google's little Street View man is orange) to choose between Streetside or Photosynth views, and if you click on a green icon in a given location, you are presented with photo galleries shot of the location. You can check out exhibits in museums such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, zooming into the building from the bird's-eye view.
Clicking on one of the green icons surrounding the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will bring up Microsoft Photosynth galleries of exhibits and the terrain around the building.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Microsoft is launching Bing Maps Beta with Streetside coverage of about 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S., but it's really only useful for traveling or searching medium-size cities or larger; suburban data is quite light. And even within cities such as San Francisco, Streetside is limited to essentially the downtown areas. Microsoft representatives said Wednesday they plan to add more data as soon as possible, but it could take quite a while.
A more generic search for a city or town such as San Francisco within Bing Maps Beta brings up a Wikipedia article on the city, weather information, and links to Photosynth galleries on the left hand side of the page alongside a map of the area. Clicking on "more details" brings up links to more photos, local news and "popular landmarks," although Microsoft should probably rethink the listing of the Port of Oakland as a popular San Francisco landmark.
Search for a specific address, such as CNET's downtown San Francisco office on 2nd Street, and Bing Maps Beta provides helpful icons to bars, restaurants, gas stations, and other locations within a given radius when you click on the "What's Nearby" icon.
It's pretty easy to get directions between two given locations, such as Microsoft Research's Mountain View, Calif., labs and CNET's downtown San Francisco headquarters. Bing lacks Google Maps' nice addition of Street View photos of each turn--since it doesn't have nearly that much data--but makes up a little bit of the gap with a helpful "if you reach X street, you've gone too far" reminder at the end of the journey and also listing prominent landmarks at certain turns.
Bing Maps Beta had plenty of suggestions for things to do around CNET's downtown San Francisco offices, but I had to zoom in very far to find my favorite bar. Maybe that's a good thing.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Microsoft has an awfully long way to go before it can duplicate the reams of Street View data that Google has assembled, as seen with its directions feature. Its rival certainly noticed Microsoft's announcement Wednesday, putting out a blog post of its own highlighting the fact that it has added Street View images of Sea World and second-rate New England learning institution Boston University. (Go Eagles)
At the moment, Google Maps has Bing beat when it comes to speed and comprehensive data. In addition, Google also surfaces some of the same helpful data, such as photo galleries and even videos.
Bing, however, offers a much richer look at the world. It does this at the expense of performance, but it presents a credible alternative to Google Maps for travelers and residents of major cities.
Google.com won't show any of the links in the image on the right until a home page visitor moves his or her mouse.
(Credit: Google)After testing a new-look home page for several weeks, Google is ready to roll it out to the masses.
Google announced the new "fade-in" look for its home page Wednesday, combining its goal of minimalism and its desire to promote Google products beyond search. Starting Monday, visitors to Google.com will be greeted by a page totally devoid of anything but the Google logo, the search bar, and the search buttons. Google tends to roll out these types of changes gradually, so you may not see it at first.
That is, until they move their mouse. That will bring up the regular links at the top of the page to image search, news, settings, and the various other links off the home page that Google has added over the years.
Google ran about 10 different versions of the change before settling on this one, said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products, in a blog post. The company is famously exacting about the changes to what could be considered the Web's most valuable piece of real estate.
The new look doesn't seem to be affiliated with the search user interface changes that Google is also testing, although the company plans to hold a search event on Monday that could reveal more details around that design.
(Credit:
Google)
Before Wednesday, you could star a map as a favorite on Google Maps online, and you could star one on Google Maps for Mobile, but you could never connect the two.
A small but significant update that Google added to Google Maps for Mobile 3.3 now syncs your starred locations between the map app on your Symbian and Windows phones, and your online account.
To start your syncing, press Menu and then Starred Items. You'll need to log into your account from the Starred Items screen to start syncing favorite maps. If you're upgrading from a previous version of the maps app, you'll be asked if you'd like to sync your favorites. Say yes.
Then, you're able to mark your favorite places in one location and have it surface in the other, as long as you remain logged in. This type of syncing is ideal for quickly locating that dinner spot you're headed to, or for pulling up driving directions to or from a starred location. Sure, it might make you lazy, but it'll also keep you from wasting precious time first looking up a location and then seeking directions or a phone number.
You can download Google Maps for Mobile by pointing your mobile browser to m.google.com/maps.
