Category: Tech news

Yes, it looks like something out of a ’50s sci-fi flick. But its sound is the aural equivalent of a swimming pool filled with French vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate-dipped diamonds.

Go ahead and snort at the price — $600 is a lot of cheese for an iPhone dock — but the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air is simply the best set of multimedia speakers in its class. The quality and clarity of the audio that comes out of this monolithic oval is jaw-dropping, and anyone who’s serious about hi-fi gear will see this price tag as a bargain, once they sit down and listen to it. The fact you also get lossless streaming over Wi-Fi, thanks to Apple AirPlay, is a big bonus.

Bowers & Wilkins, a British company dating back to the mid-1960s, has built up a glowing reputation among audio geeks. The company’s P5 headphones and MM-1 desktop speakers both earned high marks from our test lab, and B&W’s first Zeppelin, introduced in 2008, is considered the gold standard of audio fidelity for devices in this class. So there’s no hard sell required among those in the know, even at six bills.

The speaker layout has changed — the midrange drivers have been upgraded and the tweeters are now the same ones B&W puts in its MM-1 desktop speakers. The new Zep’s low-frequency amp is still rated at the same 50 watts, but the midrange amp array has been upgraded from two 25-watt amps to four 25-watt class D amps. There’s also a new dimpled rear port design.

The iPod/iPhone dock is now a fully digital connection (and yes, you can plop your iPad in, but it’s awkward), and the on-board chips for digital-to-analog conversion and signal processing have been redone as well.

These enhancements have improved the sound, adding more detail and clarity. It’s especially noticeable in the very high and very low frequencies.

The external design has stayed the same, to the dismay of those who think it’s silly. Also, the fact the Zep now Wi-Fi-enabled throws a wrench into things, because even when it’s pumping out sound without the phone or iPod docked, that big metal thumb is still sticking out the front. If the dock was removable, design freaks wouldn’t give it the stink eye.

At least the minimalist look is unobtrusive, and it won’t dumb down your classy, ultra-modern wine bar with garish logos. And so what if it looks like a giant black doobie? The sound is kick-ass.

I threw every kind of music I could at it — rock, techno, hip-hop, jazz, modern pop, roots reggae, Balinese gamelan — and everything sparkled.

The bass can be overwhelming if you stand right next to it, so I wouldn’t recommend using it as your desktop computer speaker rig. But three feet away, the sound becomes perfectly balanced and stays that way all the way across the room.

It sounds best on a table or dresser about a foot away from the wall, which is fine since the cable connections, should you need them, are also in the back. In fact, I moved it around when we were shooting photos, and the only place where it didn’t sound amazing was on my hardwood floor.

Now, about the wireless features: The Zeppelin Air is one of the first products to market with Apple’s new AirPlay technology built-in. AirPlay is young and I had some issues, but the verdict is that AirPlay support is a big positive. That’s good news since AirPlay, first introduced last November, is about to start showing up in every set of speakers out there.

Photo: Spencer Lowell

Even a basic telescope can deliver clear views of celestial regulars like Jupiter and its moons. But for NASA-worthy sights of, say, the Crab Nebula, you need serious gear—and serious coin. Enter the Meade MAX 20? telescope. Its optics are coated with nanothin layers of proprietary materials that help guide every cosmic photon into your eye or camera. And the focal plane is almost perfectly flat, so the edges of your shots won’t be too blurry. Press a button and the robotic mount points the 20-inch aperture (astronomers have discovered comets with less) at any of 140,000 preset objects, from galaxy clusters to the ISS. You can even control the 10-foot-high rig—don’t worry, it breaks down for transport—from a laptop or cell phone. So if you’re in the mood for stargazing but not the outdoors, you can monitor things from your sofa. And if you can afford this scope, your sofa must be amazing.

Photo: by Jens Mortensen

The dime-sized tracking devices that movie spies stick on villains’ cars don’t exist (that we know of). But there are some fairly small options for keeping tabs on your closest enemies.

1. Lightning GPS Spark Nano

Not much bigger than a Zippo, the Spark determines its position via cell towers. Just tuck it into something you need to track and follow along on the intuitive web client that updates in real time or at set intervals. Even with 30-second updates and stashed in a backpack inside a car, the Spark was fast and sensitive enough to show us the moment our significant other (a willing participant) missed a turn on her way home.

WIRED Push notifications warn if the Spark crosses one of the Geo Fences (no-go zones) you’ve designated.

TIRED Must export data for replay. Kinda creepy.

$150, plus $70 activation fee and contract (starting at $210 for three months), lightninggps.com

2. iTrail GPS Passive Logger

This unit ditches the onboard transmitter and instead records location data for download once you retrieve the device. While that means no real-time monitoring, the upside is a tiny form factor about the size of a tea bag—truly concealable. The Logger returned the finest location accuracy of the bunch, and the Google Earth-based software was the easiest and most entertaining to use.

WIRED No service plan required. Automatic pop-up info during replay details how much time was spent at each stop along the journey.

TIRED After-the-fact info means no catching people in the act or recovering your stolen luggage. Retrieval is just another chance to get caught. No Mac compatibility.

$190, myitrail.com

3. Livewire FastTrac

Another cell-based solution, the FastTrac is nearly twice the size of the Spark but adds a motion sensor and double the standby time (10 days). Web-based software offers replay and address lookup, so you’ll know if 450 Elm Street is a shoe store, a café, or something else altogether. Need to communicate with someone you’re tracking? Skype integration makes it easy. No-button operation is idiot-proof, but this is a lot of power to put in the hands of an idiot.

WIRED No contract required. SMS alerts when unit exceeds a set speed, so you’ll know if the parking guys have taken your dad’s Ferrari out for a spin.

TIRED Expensive. Very creepy.

$400, plus $25 activation fee and $39.95/month, brickhousesecurity.com

Buggin’ Out

Photo: by Jens Mortensen

Think somebody’s watching you? The Brickhouse Security Cell Phone & Gps Detector ($295) will tell you if you’re crazy—or drive you there itself. The walkie-talkie-sized widget detects signals from GPS trackers and listening devices. This would be helpful, or at least entertaining, if cell phones didn’t often emit the same signals. Is it alerting you to a bug in your apartment or just your neighbor’s HTC Incredible? But if you can eliminate the known devices, it will indeed spot uninvited broadcasting. A quick scan of the cabin could add muscle to airline requests to shut off cell phones. But it’s of little use to people whose biggest privacy concerns are their Facebook settings (most of us).—J.H.

Photo: Greg Broom

These high tech dryers all boast innovations like negative ions and far-infrared-emitting ceramics. The makers claim they dry hair faster and leave it healthier. We hit the showers to separate the heat from the hype.

1. Parlux 3800 Eco Dryer

This neon wonder is a workhorse disguised as a pony. It shaved 10 minutes off our normal 45-minute drying time and left our hair so soft that we (briefly) considered skipping our normal arsenal of finishing potions. It’s robust, too. The burly plastic body survived a couple of hard drops to the floor.

WIRED Compact, carry-on size is easy to handle. Hardcore touches like solid silver contacts on switches support the claim of 2,000 hours of drying time. Four temperature settings are almost an embarrassment of riches. Cold shot gets cold fast.

TIRED Small, yes, but also arm-fatiguingly heavy. It may be built from recycled materials, but at the highest setting it dimmed the lights in our home—not exactly ecofriendly.

$229, parlux.it

2. BaByliss Volare V1

The Volare features a motor built by Ferrari (yes, that Ferrari) that blows a hurricane-force 80-mph stream. Our locks were bone-dry in minutes, but this powerful rig’s not for amateurs. Without competent brush skills, you’ll be left looking disheveled. While it was one of the heavier dryers in our test, the even weight distribution meant it was more comfortable in our hands than lighter units.

WIRED Nice to look at, especially in classic Rosso Corsa (race red). Um … Ferarri. The extra-long, extra-flexible cord allows for great maneuverability.

TIRED Loud enough to be mistaken for an actual car. Priced like one, too. Didn’t leave our hair looking salon-shiny.

$400, babylisspro.co.uk

3. Cricket Centrix Q-Zone

The Q-Zone was the Prius of our test: homely, unassuming, and quiet. The painstakingly engineered fan, a cross between a ceiling fan and a jet propeller, is mounted sideways to reduce noise without cutting air speed. But while it does dry faster than some of the more blustery contenders, the oversize fan means it’s bulky, back-heavy, and difficult to store.

WIRED Softer airflow leaves hair smooth and silky, even if your round-brush skills are lacking. Mechanical scream replaced by relatively soothing whir.

TIRED Strong ozone odor, which some of our testers called “clean” and others called “nuclear winter.” Annoying vibration in chassis. Cold-shot setting wasn’t cold.

$150, cricketco.com

4. Sultra The Sophisticate

We were excited to pit a Japanese rig against all these Western blowhards. Unfortunately, the Sophisticate turned out to be a bunch of (ahem) hot air. While the body is sleek and confidently assembled, it was the heaviest and most unbalanced model we tested. It does dry hair lightning-fast, but the trade-off is a roar that loudly suggests—of both dryer and user—”high maintenance.”

WIRED Two-year warranty is more comprehensive than your health care coverage, and the hang ring is the best of the bunch.

TIRED Not enough difference between heat settings. Too long and bulky to use for anything but point-and-shoot. Need a screwdriver to remove air filter for cleaning.

$245, sultra.com

You can’t deny Dell some hard-fought gee-whiz cred with the new Inspiron Duo.

In a world of commoditized portables, it is nothing if not a unique product. Show it off to your friends; it looks like a netbook, and you pop open the laptop-like clamshell and wait for the bored expression to appear. Then comes the sucker punch: you rotate the screen horizontally within its frame and snap the laptop back shut. Ta-da, it’s a freakin’ tablet, bro! People are duly impressed. It’s a neat trick and, at the very least, a clever feat of engineering.

But what is the Dell Inspiron Duo? Cut through the mystery and you will find — sorry to burst your bubble — a Windows netbook with a rotating touchscreen.

And that begs the question, what is it good for?

Well, we’re still working on that one.

This is the problem with dual-function gadgets in general: They rarely do either of the things they’re designed for very well. As a netbook, the Duo is at least passable. While it’s heavier than other 10-inch netbooks by up to half a pound, it’s well designed and looks good, and the 1366 x 768 screen’s brightness is about average for the category. But performance is unfortunately poor all around (a 1.5-GHz Atom doesn’t get you very far), and the two measly USB ports could stand an upgrade.

As a tablet, the Duo fares considerably worse. Here, its three pounds of heft are way too much for extended use, and the clamshell design adds an uncomfortable thickness to the device that makes it hard to hold. The screen also suffers from the same poor viewing-angle problems that sunk the Streak 7. If you’re not holding it dead on, the screen is virtually illegible.

Of course, the biggest problem here really isn’t Dell’s fault, it’s that Windows just doesn’t work very well for touchscreen devices, especially not on a small scale like this. Use the Duo in tablet mode for more than three minutes and your skin starts to crawl. You want to get something done quickly. You try to hit Control-C. Soon you find you’re reaching over and over for a keyboard that isn’t there. Except, of course, it is. Thank God for that.

WIRED 320GB hard drive is bigger than my laptop’s. Flipping system works well, feels sturdy. Dell Stage custom launcher app loads automatically in tablet mode, makes Windows a bit more useful as a slate. Duo Audio Station ($100 more) adds much-improved audio and a vertical docking system.

TIRED Tediously slow all around; get used to a lot of waiting. Screen is hideous. Too heavy for regular, table-free use.

Photos courtesy of Dell

As Sly Stone said, the nicer the nice, the higher the price.

The question is, is the more expensive Xoom nicer than the comparable iPad?

The experience is markedly different, that’s for sure. Anyone familiar with Apple’s market-leading tablet — and the Xoom invites the comparison — will face a few moments of disorientation when picking up the Xoom for the first time. A few details are unsettling to iPad users, such as the location of the power button (on the rear of the device), the lack of front-facing command buttons, and the unfamiliar location of the volume rocker.

Those details will be irrelevant to non-Apple users, of course, but even dedicated Android fans will find that the Xoom’s version of the OS, Android 3.0 Honeycomb, takes a bit of getting used to.

Some things don’t work the same as they do on older versions of Android. For instance, instead of holding down the (virtual) Home button to see a list of running apps, there’s now a separate icon for displaying a vertical menu of apps. To see the full list of installed apps, you press a separate Apps button in the upper right of the screen.

And while the lack of front hardware buttons gives the device a cleaner look, it does mean that virtual buttons clutter up the display and rob you of screen space in most applications. It’s a trade-off.

But once you’ve oriented yourself to Honeycomb’s and Xoom’s idiosyncracies, what emerges is a tablet that’s very well-suited to reading and to video.

The Xoom has a 10.1-inch screen (measuring 8.5 inches by 5.25 inches), and it’s as bright and sharp as any other high-end tablet. We did notice a slightly discolored band running down the edge of the screen on one side, but since we can’t compare it to other Xooms yet, we don’t know if this is a problem with our review unit or a more general manufacturing defect.

The 1280 x 800 screen is pretty close to a standard widescreen aspect ratio, so videos can fill the whole screen with minimal clipping.

The Xoom is a little bit shorter than the iPad in landscape mode, but that means that when you flip the Xoom to portrait mode, the screen is skinnier and taller. This is actually perfect for reading books, scrolling down web pages, or catching up on Instapaper. It’s comfortable to hold the Xoom with one hand while you swipe with the other, and — because the vertical page is so tall — there’s less swiping than on smaller screens.

The rubbery back panel has enough grip that you don’t really need to clamp onto the thing while you’re reading. If you feel fatigued by holding your iPad one-handed for long periods of time as we do, you’ll appreciate this.

In short, it’s an excellent, basic media consumption device — as long as your media don’t rely on stellar audio. If you’re planning on zoning out with a movie or a few videos, we’d recommend keeping a decent pair of headphones on hand.

The big problem with the sound? The speakers are on the back of the tablet. They sound fine if you turn the tablet around to face the speakers toward you, but if you’re holding the Xoom so you can see its screen, the sound is projecting away from your head. Everything sounds muffled: Movie dialogue is harder to understand, and music just sounds dead and lifeless.

There’s an optional dock with speakers built in, but when you plop the Xoom into the dock to watch a movie, the dock speakers sit behind the tablet, too. So it’s the same problem all over again, just a little louder.

This past weekend, I saw the film The Adjustment Bureau. It’s an entertaining movie — not great, but sort of fun and interesting. The plot (and I’m not giving anything away that the trailer doesn’t) involves a man who stumbles upon a shocking reality: he’s not in control of his destiny. Instead, there’s actually a secret group, the Adjustment Bureau, that runs the show behind the scenes.

The story is actually a somewhat rehashed one in movie lore (The Matrix, Dark City, etc). And it’s even older in the science fiction realm (this one is loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick). But reading over the blogosphere the past couple of days, I feel like I’m still watching the movie. It’s as if some people on the web truly believe that Facebook is this Adjustment Bureau. Increasingly, they control the network, and thus, our lives, and maybe even our fate.

So while we’re all having this discussion about Facebook Comments, let’s be clear what this is really about: Facebook. It has very little to do with the actual commenting side of things. That’s becoming more and more apparent.

(For a good discussion on the actual commenting angle, see Laura June’s editorial tonight on Engadget. She makes several excellent points, many of which I agree with — though maybe not for TechCrunch, specifically.)

The fact is that Facebook Comments are just the latest extension of the fear of the growing power of Facebook. This backlash seems particularly heated because the comments are seen as spreading over over parts of the web previously free of the Facebook Bureau’s reach, like TechCrunch.

The reality, of course, is that this is bogus. Facebook sharing buttons have been on this site for years, just like everywhere else on the web. (If we sold out, we did it years ago.) This commenting situation is perceived as different because it’s more directly being tied to visible identity and is being forced upon the very, very small percentage of TechCrunch readers who ever actually leave a comment.

The truth is that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes here. Some people hate the commenting system because they don’t use Facebook and prefer to login through another method (they apparently don’t use Yahoo either). Others hate the system for deeply conflicted reasons related to who they work for or who they invest in. And still others hate the system because they alter the time-honored tradition of (perceived) anonymous commenting on the web. Yadda, yadda.

The common thread shared by every one of these groups is the same: they’re all scared shitless of Facebook.

Again, the underlying notion is that Facebook is the Adjustment Bureau and out to get us. This is nothing new, every few months there’s some level of Facebook backlash during which dozens of very loud people threaten to quit the social network — and never quite seem to. This undercurrent of paranoia is hardly exclusive to Facebook: Microsoft, Google, Apple — they’re all evil and out to screw you depending on what day it is and what article you read. But the sentiment seems the strongest with Facebook. And it’s clear why: they’re currently winning.

At first, I too thought this latest episode was simply about wanting the option to log in with Twitter or Google. But now I’m really not so sure. Those were going to be offered by Facebook, but I suspect that wouldn’t have been good enough. People still would have been screaming bloody murder because it’s Facebook. It’s fascinating. People really are afraid of them.

As frequent TechCrunch contributor Steve Cheney wrote in his own post on the matter:

And forcing people to comment – and more broadly speaking to log-on – with one identity puts a massive stranglehold on our very nature. I’m not too worried about FB Comments in isolation, but the writing is on the wall: all of this off-site encroachment of the Facebook graph portends where FB is really going in pushing one identity. And a uniform identity defies us.

What Cheney leaves out is that this is also exactly what Google and just about every other tech company large enough hopes to do. How do I know? Google CEO Eric Schmidt has matter-of-factly said it numerous times. In fact, his vision may even be a bit more extreme than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s.

But the cold hard truth is that Facebook is getting all the attention because they’re they ones in the best position to make this actually happen. And again, that scares the crap out of some people.

My immediate reaction is that this is sort of silly — especially because this will naturally shift in a few years (if not sooner). And if Facebook were to do something to screw their users over, those users would just leave. Facebook is not actually the Adjustment Bureau. But hey, who am I to tell people what to be paranoid about?

While we’re on the subject, I thought it would be fun to also address some of the other conspiracy theories about the Facebook comments on TechCrunch. I’ve already seen a few references to this being a decision made to bolster traffic. Here’s more or less the way this decision was actually made (which I know, because I was there):

MG: Facebook has been talking to us about maybe being a launch partner for their new commenting system.

Mike: Oh really? Will it be hard to implement Vineet? [our lead engineer]

Vineet: Nope, it will just take a few minutes.

Mike. Cool, let’s do it.

Yep, it really is that simple. No layers of AOL bureaucracy. No TPS reports. No extensive testing. We do it live.

And, as we’ve said from day one, that may mean switching things up again. We’ll see. It’s just fascinating to watch the blogosphere twist itself into a knot over such a seemingly small thing. Right now, if you want to comment on TechCrunch, you can to log-in with Facebook. Or if you don’t like/have Facebook, you can use Yahoo. That’s it. No biggie.

But it’s very clear it’s not a small thing to at least .5 percent of you reading this right now. And certainly not to those that see the Facebook Bureau approaching in matching fedoras.

[images: Universal Pictures]

I had a conversation today with a colleague to discuss our SXSW Interactive strategy. My coworker figured, rightfully, that SXSW would be a shitshow and that maybe we should use one of the much talked about group texting apps to stay in touch. I only “use” one group texting app, one that I covered for TechCrunch, and thus suggested GroupMe. My colleague said that he liked Beluga better and that we should use Beluga. And then he hesitated, “Hmm … Well maybe we shouldn’t use Beluga because what if Facebook ‘does something to them’ ?…”

!!! This is the hyper-techy microcosm that we live in, where you’re scared to use a budding app to communicate with co-workers during a conference lest a company “do something” to it. And what? You end up looking uncool?

While there’s no way I’m going to ever be the ideal use case for Group Texting ( … is the new “Location Based”), because it necessitates having more than one friend, I can’t really see the big problem it solves. Or rather, I have no idea why there are tens of tens apps in in the space.

Also, I have no idea why a SXSW breakfast with Guy Kawasaki is presented as a prize, but the email promoting it has miraculously found its way to my inbox, along with a bunch of nonsense “VIP” events sponsored by non-tech companies and a ton of pitches from a bunch of startups that just confuse me by their reluctance to say what it is they actually do, lest someone out there clones their killer app before their plane hits Austin-Bergstrom.

A follow through on one of these pitches leads you down an inbox rabbit hole where seven emails later you figure out it’s a Group Texting app but the founders don’t want to reveal that just yet because they don’t want anyone to copy them.

“Then why pitch to the press so early?” “To build “buzz” before SXSW.” Geez. Geez.

While I wouldn’t miss it for the world (Rachel Sklar and I are moderating an incredibly worthy and industry relevant core conversation here), SXSW creeps me out, if simply because it makes otherwise sane people act so silly.

But this SXSW 2011 Influencers Guide, a mashup of Plancast and some shady thing called Socmetrics, is the epitome of why I’m already sick of SXSW four days before it’s even started. Mainly because it reminds me that we’re now viewing each other as “influencers” and have somehow stopped looking at each other as “people” — I didn’t study so hard to get out of high school just to be faced with a whole ‘nother high school as an adult.

And I just RSVP’d in a panic to some super-duper VIP thing while writing this, so trust me, I understand the allure of hobnobbing with the tech snobs and am not immune. But at the drunken end of the SXSW day proceed with caution: You almost never want to be a part of the cool kids, because they’re not the ones actually getting anything done. I promise.

Video: Alex Blagg

@tempo
Thor Muller

Don't wait! RSVP to hang out with me at SXSW before tickets run out. http://t.co/EBgEaoC

about 1 hour ago via Twitter for MacRetweetReply

@Gartenberg
Michael Gartenberg

This is typical of why I'm not going to SXSW. "follow @BigBoi, unlock a Golden Ticket Badge, and party with him & @PepsiMAX at SXSW!"

about 4 hours ago via EchofonRetweetReply

@dannysullivan
Danny Sullivan

i'm already sick of people being sick of SXSW http://tcrn.ch/fp3W3F – just kidding, @alexia 🙂

about 1 hour ago via Seesmic twhirlRetweetReply

If you’ve seen the name Nyoombl before, it’s for one of two reasons. First, it’s a really weird way to spell a word that sounds like “Nimble”. Or second, they launched at DEMO last spring as one of the 65 startups. At the time, they were working on a dead-simple solution for videoconferencing on your television. But that space is both tricky and now crowded with the likes of Cisco. So about five months ago, founder Oladayo Olagunju decided it was time for a don’t-call-it-a-pivot-pivot. He decided to take what he had learned about the video conferencing space and transfer it over to a new, unexplored area. And his team has been working hard on this new Nyoombl ever since.

But it’s not ready yet. And Olagunju is reluctant to share much about their plans until it’s ready. But here’s what we do know: it’s going to be a completely new service that’s a sort of hybrid of Skype and YouTube. In other words, it will allow any two people to take a video conversation and share it with the world, for all to see on the web. But think: debates and interviews, rather than straight up chats. “We are a broadcasting technology company, not a communications tool,” Olagunju says.

Bigger picture, Olagunju says that the aim is to breakdown the walls that you see around the majority of important conversations being had today on places like cable television. “We hope to bring the entire notion of a studio setup worth millions of dollars and compress it into a laptop,” he says.

And he has some good people advising him on how to do that, including entrepreneur Adam Rifkin, Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, and venture capitalist Lara Druyan. Nyoombl has also received funding from one ex-Facebook executive, though Olagunju declines to say who just yet as the round isn’t fully closed.

Nyoombl plans to start inviting a very limited amount of people to try out their service shortly, you can sign up here. Olagunju says that they’re going to take the roll-out slow so they don’t overwhelm the servers with all the video streaming required to make this work. For now, you can sign up here.

Nyoombl is currently a team of three people working out of Palo Alto.

It’s a problem as common as it is ugly: between your television, Blu-Ray player, surround sound tuner, cable box, and DVR, you probably have at least three remotes sitting on your coffee table. And then there’s the elaborate list of steps required to get each component working properly (don’t forget to set the tuner to HDMI2 before firing up the Blu-Ray!) The associated headaches have spawned an entire industry of super-remotes like Logitech’s Harmony devices. But what about the mobile powerhouses we’ve already dropped hundreds of dollars on — shouldn’t our smart phones be able to control our home entertainment systems?

That’s the promise of Peel, a Santa Clara-based startup that is looking to help you take control over your entertainment system using your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or (soon) Android device. The company has just launched its first product — the Peel fruit —  that retails online and in the Apple store for $99. Check out the videos below for an interview with the startup’s founders.

The plastic ‘fruit’ essentially acts as a middleman between your phone/tablet and your television components — Peel uses a Wifi connection to relay commands from your phone to the ‘fruit’, which then blasts the appropriate infrared signals to all of your hardware devices. You control everything — be it a channel change, or swapping between different content sources — using a free Peel application for your phone. The application includes a visual guide of the shows that are available (you see thumbnails with each show’s logo), and you can customize the app so that it only recommends shows you’re interested in.

Because of the way Peel works you’ll need to position the fruit device in a place where it can ‘see’ all of your components, which means you’ll have to place it several feet in front of your TV set (and possibly in plain view). It’s not exactly inconspicuous, but it could probably pass as some sort of tribal macaca.

As with similar universal remotes, setup isn’t painless (you can watch a demo of the process in the video below). After firing up the app and connecting the device you’ll be walked through a wizard designed to automatically figure out the remote codes for all of your components. But there’s some trial-and-error involved, and if you have numerous components, the process will likely take at least ten minutes. That said, there really isn’t a whole lot Peel could do to make it easier.

Peel has promise, but the mobile application itself is still pretty early. It currently allows you to browse your shows using a slick, visual interface that lets you flick between show listings on your phone or iPad, but only when you’re watching live cable — it doesn’t have deep integration with your DVR or media streaming devices. It can still control these components, but it switches to a generic browsing mode that relies on gestures: instead of showing thumbnails of available content, you essentially navigate through menus the way you would using the arrow buttons on your remote.

However, Peel has some deals in the works that will improve the situation for some users. It has signed a partnership with TiVo that will allow the app to visually navigate through shows you’ve recorded to your DVR, and it plans to launch Netflix integration in Q3 2011.

The application will also gradually add more social features, like the ability to tell friends what you’re currently watching. Here, it will face plenty of competition: IntoNow, yap.TV, Comcast’s Tunerfish and others are all trying to add a social layer to the TV experience.

Recently funded by Y Combinator, Like.fm is a way to keep track of and share what music you’re playing. Right now the service uses a Chrome, Firefox and Safari extension to automatically track what you’re listening to on YouTube, Pandora, Rdio, Meemix, Grooveshark and Earbits and a desktop client to track what you’re listening to on Winamp, iTunes, MediaMonkey or Windows Media Player.

Founder Chris Chen says that its emphasis on song tracking is what separates the Like.fm from streaming services like Last.fm and music buying networks like Apple’s Ping (which he describes as “a step above adding share buttons to the iTunes store.”) says Chen “Like.fm isn’t meant to be a destination music site, it’s meant to be a place to find songs that you like. It’s not meant to be a Pandora but a compliment to it, it’s a place for sound discovery, where you go and listen to music.”

At the moment very barebones and work-in-progress (there’s a lot of “Coming Soon” on the site) Like.fm uses Facebook Connect to automatically follow your Facebook friends on the service.  Through the Top Played chart on your Dashboard the service allows you to track the songs most played by people you followed and lets you play songs by linking to the corresponding video on YouTube (if it exists).

On a Like.fm profile you can view a Summary of the top songs a user has listened to, their entire song History or the songs they’ve set up to listen to in the Queue. Users can also easily download all their play history.

Aside from letting you comment on songs and manually share/recommend links, the service also lets you set up Auto-Share to Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm for songs that you rate at four or five stars on iTunes or Windows Media Player (Chen says that in-app rating should be coming in the next couple of weeks).

Chen hopes to eventually add more robust recommendation features like Songs You May Like, based on stuff your friends have listened to that you haven’t heard. He also hopes to build a mobile version soon and add better data visualizations like custom charts of your chronological music listening history, “I’d like to create charts of the YC Class, and what days they listen to music the most. You can guess what time people sleep by the music they play, with the YC class I’m guessing it’s probably around 5am.” That sounds about right.

Apple’s retail stores are well-known for their clean layout, product-first mentality, and obsequious staff. Though they stock things like iPod cases, printers, and so on, the focus has always been on Apple’s devices, and may soon be even more so, as it appears a fair amount of software and peripherals will be taken off the shelves to make room for more Mac-focused space. It’s an interesting indicator of the Apple ecosystem endgame.

After all, Apple is positioning itself as not just a maker of quality computing goods, but the gatekeeper and distributor for everything you purchase, be it media, software, or accessory — even in the “real world.” The iPad is a magic window into an Apple-controlled marketplace; why shouldn’t Apple stores be the same way?

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Last week, as we rolled out our new Facebook Comments system, we noted that two useful options were pulled at the last second: Twitter and Google login. And today brings more proof of that: the code still exists and works in the comment plugin itself!

As dug up by Inside Facebook, a simple line of JavaScript can add back in the option for users to log-in with their Google and Twitter credentials from the Facebook Comment widget. And you can also enable MySpace and OpenID logins as well. In other words, many of you could get your wish, and be able to use something other than Facebook or Yahoo logins to comment on TechCrunch.

But not so fast.

As Inside Facebook also notes, even when the options are enabled, errors are thrown on the other side of the equation. For example, Twitter login can’t find the page it need to successfully OAuth you in. But it does look like Google is working, for now. I suspect that will end in 3, 2, 1…

The main issue remains: Facebook cannot come to terms with their rivals to be able to work together to enable this functionality. And while the code remains (probably “just in case”), either or both sides could and would kill it in a heartbeat even if we enable it.

That Yahoo remains an option is interesting. As Josh Constine writes, “Yahoo’s inclusion in the Comments Box could be a repayment for this favor, a sign that Facebook doesn’t consider Yahoo a threat, or the result of it signing some terms or deal with Facebook.” Number two would be the most humorous (and, sadly, true), but it’s likely number three. Remember, Yahoo has gone all-in with Facebook, unable to do the social stuff on their own.

I’m curious if having the Google/Twitter/MySpace/OpenID options in the Facebook Comment box would alleviate some of the uproar over this system? That data would still be touching a service run through Facebook, so I suspect many still wouldn’t like it. But it would enable some of the trolls could more easily leave comments again, so there’s that.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification on some of this.

Cute kittens and toddlers may be YouTube’s bread and butter, but Google’s video portal needs more than that to encroach on the goliath that is cable TV. But instead of shelling out for the rights to premium content from cable networks, YouTube is hoping it can nudge its existing community toward making high quality videos.

Today the company has confirmed that it has acquired Next New Networks, a firm founded in 2007 that focuses on producing high quality original video content for the web. Alongside the news, YouTube is announcing ‘YouTube Next’, a team of experts (made up by many of the NNN team, no doubt) who are setting out to “supercharge creator development and accelerate partner growth and success”. In other words, YouTube is going to give certain partners access to a team of experts that can hopefully help them produce better content. YouTube’s pending acquisition of Next New Networks was first reported by the New York Times in December.

From the YouTube blog:

In fact, the number of partners making over $1,000 a month is up 300% since the beginning of 2010 and we now have hundreds of partners making six figures a year. But frankly, “hundreds” making a living on YouTube isn’t enough and in 2011 we know we can and should do more to help our partners grow.

The YouTube Next initiative sounds good on paper, but it’s not really clear how YouTube is going to be able to scale the program to make it useful to more than “hundreds” of partners.

Last year YouTube launched a Partner Grants Program that allows promising content creators to receive an advance on their future ad revenue so that they can invest in making videos with higher production values. And it gave a $1,000 credit to 500 partners late last year to buy new video equipment.

But both of those programs revolved around money, which scales. This YouTube Next team is about expertise — YouTube will be contacting partners that it believes could use some help, and will send in its team of experts who can offer tips on YouTube’s platform and the kind of content that tends to do well online. This training will be free, but, again, only select content partners will get access to it.

YouTube says that Next team will be global, but it isn’t saying how many people will be involved. Beyond this partner training, it sounds like YouTube will be launching further grant programs under its Next brand.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.