Archive: July 2008
Photos That Find Themselves
The first time I inspected a photo "geotagged" with the Eye-Fi Explore card and saw that Eye-Fi's software had not only placed the picture on the map within maybe 30 feet of the spot where I'd pressed the camera's button, but also the copy uploaded to Flickr was tagged with...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 31, 2008; 12:52 PM ET | Comments (8)
Tale of A Travel-Site Tiff
It never ceases to amaze me how established companies will not only attack Web sites that send business their way, but do so when they need all the help they can get. Let's look at one example from a market sector in such sad shape, that it makes the newspaper...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 30, 2008; 6:30 PM ET | Comments (11)
Are You Searching For Another Search Engine?
For much of yesterday, the blogosphere was buzzing about the debut of a new search engine called Cuil--pronounced "cool," it's Gaelic for "knowledge" and not, so far as I know, slang in any other language for "it's really hard to find a short, catchy domain name these days." The pitch...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 29, 2008; 1:53 PM ET | Comments (26)
Cameraphones and Concerts
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.--My ticket for last night's Bruce Springsteen show at Giants Stadium here came with unambiguous instructions that I, along with most of the rest of the audience, had no hope of following: "NO CAMERAS/LASERS/VIDCAMS." I left my laser at home, of course - but not my cell phone....
By Rob Pegoraro | July 28, 2008; 3:25 PM ET | Comments (21)
Yahoo Becomes Latest Site to Mute Music Purchases (Updated)
The e-mail Yahoo sent out yesterday to customers of its Yahoo Music online store could not have surprised anybody who's been following the music-download business lately. The beleaguered Sunnyvale, Calif., Web firm's music store is following the same score as earlier big-name failures like Sony Connect and MSN Music. It's...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 25, 2008; 9:45 AM ET | Comments (0)
Apple's MobileMe: The Medium is the Mess
Apple often does its best work when it buys every ingredient in the kitchen -- the computer, the software it runs, even the store you buy both products in. So maybe I should have expected MobileMe, the $99/year online service that replaces its .Mac offering, to have debuted in such...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 24, 2008; 10:28 AM ET | Comments (39)
Google Walks the Walk
Yesterday, Google added an overdue feature to its Google Maps site: the option to request walking as well as driving directions from one point to another. A blog post announcing this feature outlines its basic workings. You'll only be offered pedestrian pointers for routes shorter than 6.2 miles, and while...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 23, 2008; 4:27 PM ET | Comments (4)
Your Opinions Requested: PC-Repair Services
The e-mail came from an old friend, but it could have been sent by any random reader -- a "Help, please!" subject header, followed by a litany of computing ailments and a request for suggestions about a good in-home repair service that could, in this case, troubleshoot an erratic monitor...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 22, 2008; 10:23 AM ET | Comments (18)
Twitter Status Update
Back in April, I began playing around with Twitter, a Web site that invites its users to post very brief notes--as in, 120140 characters or less, spaces included--for anybody to read. One of my initial motivations for this experiment was shallow and vain: All the cool kids were doing it,...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 21, 2008; 11:12 AM ET | Comments (13)
Shopping for Shopping Search Engines
At this point, I have a difficult time imagining that I once had to make major purchases without knowing what dozens of different retailers charged for a given product. The Web's price-finding search engines have spoiled me rotten in that respect -- even if the quest for perfect knowledge about...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 18, 2008; 11:26 AM ET | Comments (0)
Apple Renews, But Doesn't Reinvent, the iPhone
If you look at the review I wrote of the first iPhone, you'll see that my biggest complaint about it was its closed nature--that you were stuck running only the programs Apple shipped with it. It's now a year later, and the new iPhone 3G can run hundreds of third-party...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 17, 2008; 10:10 AM ET | Comments (13)
Apple Apologizes For MobileMe
Earlier today, Apple sent an e-mail to users of MobileMe, the $99/year e-mail/calendar/contacts/photo-album service that replaced its earlier .Mac offering. It was not the usual bland "thank you for your support" communication you might expect after a new site's launch: We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe....
By Rob Pegoraro | July 16, 2008; 5:09 PM ET | Comments (18)
Well, Duh: Viacom Backs Off On YouTube Records
Not even two weeks after a federal court ruling that would have handed over gigabytes of data about the viewing habits of YouTube users to Viacom, that entertainment conglomerate decided to allow YouTube to strip out personal data from these records. Google subsidiary YouTube posted a note about this deal...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 15, 2008; 11:35 AM ET | Comments (0)
iPhone 3G First Impressions
Now that we're through with Friday's iPhone 3G feeding frenzy--and the subsequent meltdown of Apple's servers that temporarily turned many newly-purchased iPhones into "iBricks" usable only for calls to 911, it's time for an initial assessment of the second generation of this smartphone. My own $.02 worth: The new iPhone...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 14, 2008; 12:42 PM ET | Comments (43)
Don't Run Out To Buy An iPhone Today
Whether you love, like or are just curious about the iPhone 3G, I'll recycle my modest suggestion from a year ago: Don't line up at a store to buy one today unless you absolutely need it. Even though the iPhone 3G isn't the same kind of brand-new thing the first...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 11, 2008; 6:33 AM ET | Comments (200)
Social Skills For Address Books
Most of the time, I review just-released products. Today, I'm writing about a product that doesn't exist yet, and may never: an address-book program that would update its records when your friends update their own entries on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn. The components that would be...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 10, 2008; 9:36 AM ET | Comments (10)
Defective Defaults: Where to Start on a New PC?
I wish I could credit my absence from this space yesterday to pure laziness. Instead, on my arrival in the office Monday, the computer on my desk refused to boot, with the only evidence of its demise two illuminated numbers on the front: "3" and "4." The Post's IT department...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 9, 2008; 10:28 AM ET | Comments (33)
Court Invites Viacom to Violate YouTube Viewers' Privacy
Not for the first time, a court ruling in a copyright-policy case has made privacy rights an afterthought. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Louis L. Stanton ruled that Google had to hand over video-viewing records of its YouTube subsidiary to Viacom, which alleges that YouTube built a business on...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 7, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (36)
Instinct-ive Responses
If you think today's review of Sprint's Samsung Instinct sounds harsh, you should know that I got to like this phone a little better as I used it over the past couple of weeks. Initially, I thought it was a warmed-over LG Voyager, the touch-screen phone Verizon Wireless sells and...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 3, 2008; 11:33 AM ET | Comments (32)
Adobe Updates Reader, Hands Off PDF Standard
One of the most-used, least-appreciated programs on the average PC quietly got an upgrade over the weekend. Adobe Systems, Inc. shipped Adobe Reader 9, the first major new release of its free Portable Document Format file viewer since Adobe Reader 8 shipped in late 2006. A blog post at Adobe's...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 2, 2008; 12:09 PM ET | Comments (23)
AT&T Reveals iPhone 3G Prices
This morning, AT&T Wireless announced its pricing for Apple's upcoming iPhone 3G --and this news release reveals that the new model, due July 11, will be a little more expensive to use than previously thought. AT&T had earlier announced that "unlimited data" use on an iPhone 3G would cost $30...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 1, 2008; 10:06 AM ET | Comments (72)
OpenTable Offers Al Fresco Access
If any Web site ought to work on an Internet-enabled mobile phone, it should be one built specifically to get you out of your home and office and on your way to a nice restaurant. But until yesterday, OpenTable only offered a version for full-size browsing, meaning anybody without an...
By Rob Pegoraro | July 1, 2008; 9:45 AM ET | Comments (5)
