Category: Tech news

Product: Streak

Manufacturer: Dell

Wired Rating: 7

Ed. note: Dell has not announced a price for the Streak.

Here’s what you need to know about me. I spend more time checking e-mail, playing with apps and browsing on my smartphone than actually talking on the device.

So what if there was a gadget that had an enormous screen that also focused on apps and reading. Oh, with a phone feature, too.

That would look a lot like the Streak, a 6-inch slab of glass and electronics running the Android operating system — except it bills itself as a tablet. Streak is targeted at smartphone users who crave a larger display but still need a device that’s portable and could potentially replace their phone.

The Streak isn’t there yet. It is a bit of everything — a brilliant 800 x 400 display, a 5-megapixel camera, a reasonably capable phone, a solid browser and access to Android apps. But it doesn’t blow you away with any of the features. There was nothing about it that made me want to abandon my current phone or tablet.

The Streak’s 5-inch touchscreen display is just a tad bigger than the latest crop of Android smartphones (HTC Evo and Droid X each sport a 4.3-inch touchscreen) but significantly smaller than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display. That puts the device in this awkward middle ground: too big to be a real phone, too small to directly take on the tablets.

Despite a gargantuan screen, the Streak sure doesn’t suffer from obesity issues. It weighs 7.8 ounces, so it won’t rip a whole through your pocket nor will you feel too silly holding it up to an ear.
It’s also just 9.9 mm thick — almost on par with the iPhone 4 (though the iPhone is much smaller with its 3.5 inch display.) The tapered edges and rounded corners means it’s as svelte as Zoe Saldana, but don’t expect to cram it in a pair of jeggings anytime soon.

The device is also locked into landscape mode on the home screen. Sure, when you access an app you can switch over to a portrait configuration, but this feature is a little confusing at first.

Dell hasn’t extensively reskinned the Android 1.6 OS for the Streak, preferring to add just a few widgets and some user-interface enhancements. Some of it works pretty well: Two nice touches are the shortcut at the top of the screen that lets you click applications and the addition of a numeric pad next to the alphabets on the virtual keyboard.

But with the Facebook and Twitter client, Dell has taken two extremely popular tools and created versions that are … pretty unusable. For instance, you can’t check direct messages or @replies with the Twitter client, or photos and your inbox with the Facebook one. Instead of Dell’s widgets, we recommend you download the apps from the Android market and use them.

Also missing are little UI touches that would have made the device go from good to great. The ability to directly delete widgets off the touchscreen — as with the iPhone — rather than having to press a separate menu button to do it is just one example.

The Streak uses version 1.6 of the Android OS, which should be familiar to any Android phone user. The 1-GHz Qualcomm processor — pretty much a standard fixture on premium Android smartphones — keeps the device zippy.

But the older version of the OS (major smartphones are expected to update to Android 2.2 Froyo this summer) also means features are missing, such as support for Flash or multiple Gmail accounts.

The browser works beautifully on the larger display. Web pages feel more spacious on the screen, and the pinch-to-zoom feature makes it easy to handle. What would have helped is a little kickstand (as in the HTC Evo) to make watching videos on the Streak easier.

Dell isn’t offering its battery life spec, but the Streak’s battery lasted about eight hours of a heavy day’s use — using Google Maps’ turn-by-turn navigation for about 30 minutes, downloading eight or so apps from the Android market, checking e-mail, making a few calls, and playing with the browser. After flogging its capabilities all day, it finally went kaput around 8 in the evening.

Ultimately, that’s what we think defines the Streak. It is not a device for multiday use like the Kindle or the iPad. You will still have to plug the Streak in at the end of the day to keep it juiced.

Really this is a device that looks, acts and even quacks like a phone. Sure it’s a tad large, but it sure is capable. And after all, big is beautiful.

WIRED Sleek, slim design fits right into the pocket or a tiny purse. Simple UI makes for an easy-peasy experience.

TIRED Shutter lag makes photography difficult, Android 1.6 OS is so last-year. No Flash or tethering.

We just wrote about Twitter’s second deal from the new sales initiative, a TV. The new deal offers a 32-inch Vizio HDTV for $349.99 at Target, along with free shipping. But, it appears that the promotion code “TGTTWEEET,” which user needs to enter in the last stage of the checkout process to receive the deal, is incorrect. I actually tried to purchase the TV twice with the code and was told by Target that the promotion code was invalid.

Twitter Tweeted ten minutes ago (several hours after the deal was announced), saying that the code had an extra ‘e’ in it. As we wrote in our last post, the deal itself was fairly underwhelming. The TV is listed on Target as $388 (the original list price is $450), so you’ll get a little less than $40 discount plus free shipping. On Amazon the TV is listed for $405 but Walmart has the same TV for only $358, which is just $10 more than the discount.

Sam’s Club has the same TV for exactly $348. Of course the Twitter-sponsored deal includes free shipping but it certainly doesn’t make the deal a big winner.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s Earlybird deals have not been that impressive, even with all the hype about the service.

At its search event today, Google launched a new product that’s a part of Google Images: Google Image Search Ads. Basically, this allows anyone to advertise alongside Google Image searches in a new, more visual way.

“This allows you to reach hundreds of million of users who are searching on Google on a daily basis,” director of search products Ben Ling says. And Google Images is actually doing over a billion pageviews a day, Google says.

The ads will appear along the top of image search — they contain both an image and text. These won’t interfere with organic search results at all, Google says. They will be clearly marked as sponsored links, with a different color background, Google’s VP of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer says.

Mayer notes that there have always been ads along Google Images, but this is taking it to the next level with the thumbnails. And actually, certain select retailers have been able to use thumbnails with the help of Google before — but these new image ads will be open for anyone to use.

For now, these ads will only appear on the page for Google Image search, but Ling said they’ll explore rolling the ads out to other Search products eventually.

This new launch comes alongside a complete revamp of Google Images — the biggest change since it launched in 2001. Users will now have infinite scrolling and larger thumbnails.

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Last week Twitter’s Earlybird took flight with its first deal, tickets for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a film from Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Today, Twitter is unveiling its second deal from the new sales initiative, a TV. The new deal offers a 32-inch Vizio HDTV for $349.99 at Target, along with free shipping.

As we wrote in our previous coverage, Twitter is partnering with advertisers to distribute offers via the @EarlyBird account, and they get to determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and pricing. Twitter says that deals will be published via the @EarlyBird handle several times a week.

So is it a good deal? The TV is listed on Target as $388 (the original list price is $450), so you’ll get a little less than $40 discount plus free shipping. On Amazon the TV is listed for $405 but Walmart has the same TV for only $358, which is just $10 more than the discount. Sam’s Club has the same TV for exactly $348. Of course the Twitter-sponsored deal includes free shipping.

So in the end, it’s an ok deal. Nothing really spectacular, considering all the hype around EarlyBird. Last week’s deal was also mediocre, considering the terrible reviews the movie received.

Today at Google’s search event in San Francisco, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, announced a revamp of Google Images — the company’s image search product. The service garners more than a billion pageviews a day for Google, Mayer said.

Director of Search Products, Ben Ling, then took the stage to show off some of the changes (which we previewed here). First, he gave some stats. When Google Images launched in 2001, 250 million images were indexed. By 2005, this was up to a billion images. Now, in 2010, they’re over 10 billion images indexed, Ling said.

People are using Google image search for all kinds of things — such as looking for products. But Ling said that the fastest rising image search terms in 2010 are: Haiti, Kesha, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, and Avatar.

Yes, Justin Bieber. You’re welcome, Internet.

Google Image Search has hundreds of millions of users, Ling said. Today, Google is launching the largest revamp of the product since it launched in 2001.

The main emphasis now is on showing hundreds or thousands of images on a single (continuously scrolling) page. And the thumbnails for those images are larger. Hovering over them shows the meta data for that image. Clicking on the image takes you to the page that the image resides on, but the image is overlaid very large with the page dimmed in the background. It’s all about the image now.

Google said this new image search will begin rolling out today to users (about 10% have it right now). The roll-out will continue throughout this week. This product will work in “modern browsers” — which is Google’s cute way of saying “all browsers by IE 6.”

Google also unveiled a new Google Image Search Ad product at the event today.

Today at a special press event in San Francisco, Google is showcasing some of the latest features that will be rolling out on its search engine. The event will be starting shortly, and from the decor it’s clear that the focus of the event will be Google Image Search. One announcement will almost certainly be a new look for Google Images, but we expect to hear much more. My live notes from the event are below; look for more posts calling out each major announcement.

Update: Here are the links for what Google had to say today:

Google Image Search: Over 10 Billion Images, 1 Billion Pageviews A Day

Google Unveils Image Search Ads — Your Ads Now With Picture Thumbnails

Google VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer has taken the stage. She says that today is about Google Images. The site sees 1 billion page views every day. People come to the site for a multitude of reasons: they go to shop, to find out what something looks like, what the First Dog looks like. Education, coloring books. Entertainment.

Ben Ling, Director, Search Products has taken the stage. He says one of the site’s differnating factors is comprehensiveness. 250 million images when Image Search launched in beta in 2001. 10 billion images today. The fastest rising terms of 2010: Haiti, Kesha, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Avatar.

Nate Smith, Google Images PM, is on stage. Runs a query for “Beach”. Showing that you can jump between different types of images (clip art, line drawing, faces, etc.). ‘Find Similar Images’ lets you find images that are visually similar to a seed image. Showing using it to look at an eagle (and then similar looking eagles). Can search for leopard, see visually similar images, and also look at the content on the pages the images appear on to show related search.

Another feature that has proven popular: color search. If you run a search for ‘tulips’ and select the color pink, it will not just look for images that contain a lot of pink pixels, it looks for images in which the tulips themselves are ping.

One problem users have is they have to click an image, find one they might not like, hit “back”, go back to the list of images and repeat — it’s not very efficient. “That’s why we’re here today”. There’s still a lot of room for improvement. “Today we’re launching the largest redesign of Google Images since 2001″.

Results are now shown on the screen without text/links — it’s all images. It has infinite scrolling (images load dynamically as you keep scrolling down the page). You can get up to 1,000 images on one page. Second thing they’ve changed is that you get more information on the results page. Clicking an image gives a larger thumbnail preview, rather than opening it in a frame — this makes it easier to quickly browser through many images. The snippet accompanying each image is also more comprehensive.

What happens when you click through? First you see a big version of the image, with a preview of the website it came from in the background (no more annoying frame nested at the top of the browser).

Announcement for advertisers: Google Image Search Ads. A new ad product that allows you to run your own image as an ad on Image Search.

Q&A:
A: Ads will appear on the top, will have an image and ad text.

Q: Is there a fair use issue with showing full image instead of thumbnail?
A: We believe our implementation is within fair use. That said, when you look at the page, you do get webpage behind the image; you get both in a single view.

Q: Do you have estimate on percentage of queries that have commercial use (for ads)?
A: We see a lot of in entertainment, travel, retail. No number to announce.

A: It’s going out now, currently around 10%. Going out over the course of the week.

Q: How do ads show up/compete with organic search results?
A: They always show in the same place at the top of the page; they’re separated and clearly marked as sponsored links.

Q: Why now?
A: There have been ads before now, but they’ve generally been text based. Now we’re doing images.

Q: Do you see a pricing premium compared to a text ad?
A: We expect users to get higher value out of those ads, so we expect that there should be a premium over text ads.

A: For now this is just desktop. We’re launching on modern browsers first (Chrome, Safari, Firefox 3.0+, IE8 and 7).

A: There’s no tool to select time in image search now,but it will be coming.

A:. Google.com redesign has been very positive. Because of left hand nav bar many of our properties are now seeing increased volumes of searches.

Q: Images in search ads beyond image search?
A: Good suggestion, something we’ll explore.

Vertical Scroll Interface was hard to get right; had to do pagination to help make sure users knew where they were. Prefetching information about some images to make sure that page scrolling is consistent.

Q: Will infinite scroll come to web search?
A: It’s interesting, it’s possible. Something to think about, but may be more difficult with web search than image search.

Regarding the frame at the top of the screen in the old version, Smith says that even in the original design docs nobody really liked the frame (they knew it wasn’t quite right). But it was very difficult to come up with a better solution.

We’re here in San Francisco for a Google Search event. It’s not yet clear what this event will be about, but we know Marissa Mayer will be on hand to show off some new things. One of those things definitely looks to be a revamping of Google Images. Google has been bucket testing changes to the service over the past week or so.

The room we’re in has walls covered in a mural with large pictures. This matches some of the bucket test designs we’ve seen. Rather than show the meta data below images, it now appears that you can hover (or click) over an image to enlarge it and show the meta data.

In other words, yes, it looks more like Bing.

The event should be starting relatively shortly. Stay tuned for more.

Update: Here are the links for what Google had to say today:

Google Image Search: Over 10 Billion Images, 1 Billion Pageviews A Day

Google Unveils Image Search Ads — Your Ads Now With Picture Thumbnails

Live From Google’s Image Search Event

[thanks Roi]

The plucky little PogoPlug, which I reviewed last December, has seen a number of modest updates in the months since. All of these updates are rolled out automatically, so unless you’re following the PogoPlug blog you might never know about them. The word on the street today is that a whole new PogoPlug device is coming, called the PogoPlug Biz. It sports a white case, instead of the jarring pink of the non-biz version, and offers a number of handsome features.

Ever sent or received an email that was just screaming to be misunderstood?

There’s a good chance you have, and if not it will happen some day – just trust me on that one. Unless …

Canadian startup Lymbix thinks it can help you avoid situations that come out of misinterpreted textual communication with the launch of a new service called ToneCheck.

Think of it as an emotional spell-check application.

Available today for Microsoft Outlook, with support for more desktop and Web-based email clients slated for the future, ToneCheck is supposedly capable of identifying the emotional definition of words and phrases in order to help end users improve the clarity of their communication.

The application gauges words and phrases against 8 levels of connotative feeling, enabling end users to make real-time corrections and adjust the overall tone of messages using a simple menu system. Text interpretation problems: solved. Provided you use Outlook, of course.

Any readers who still do, please be so kind to give ToneCheck a whirl and tell us if it sucks rocks stinks is worth its salt. At the very least, their graphics are quite amusing:

Cloud-based game streaming service Gaikai has taken an investment from Intel Capital and Limelight Networks. While it’s unclear how much Intel invested, the firm could have been one of the un-named partners in Gaikai’s $10 million funding round in May.

Gaikai offers a server-based, cloud-gaming technology that streams games, allowing users to play any game inside the web browser. Gaikai’s game streaming service hosts the games, runs them and then streams them to users, allowing them to interact with games wherever they are browsing. Gaikai will launch this summer, with unsurprisingly, servers powered by Intel’s Six-Core processors and Intel Solid State Drives. The games will also be running throught the key nodes of the Limelight network.

Gaikai recently announced a deal with Electronic Arts to stream EA’s games, including The Sims, Mass Effect and Medal of Honor, over Gaikai. Gaikai faces competition from OnLive.

In a lateral move that is akin to a car company selling buggy whips, MovieTickets.com will start selling movie tickets through an Xbox 360 interface, thereby allowing players to experience a thing called “real life” and perhaps take part in a common courtship ritual known as a “date.”

As you see from the description, you don’t actually buy the movie tickets via the interface but instead are connected to a “Microsoft tag” that brings you to a payment system for tickets using a mobile phone.

Read more…

Online gaming service Raptr has just dropped its beta tag and launched its 1.0 release, and it’s safe to say that it’s finally living up to its mission statement: to make it easy to play games with your friends.

A year ago, Raptr rolled out a multi-protocol chat client that allowed gamers to see what games their friends were playing (this included support for both PC games and console games).That worked fairly well, but CEO Dennis Fong says that it came with one big caveat: it only worked if you got your friends to sign up for a Raptr account, which was obviously a significant hurdle. Raptr’s latest release fixes this, allowing you to see if your friends are playing games on their PS3, Xbox 360, and PC (including casual Flash games, Steam and Xfire) — even if they don’t have Raptr accounts. In other words, the service is now far more useful than it used to be.

When you see that one of your buddies is online and in a game, you can send messages to them from the Raptr client regardless of which platform they’re on. For some games, you can see even more supplementary information — for example, if someone is playing Madden 2010, you can see which teams your friends are playing as. Another recently added feature is a chat overlay, which PC gamers can pull up on top of the game they’re playing without having to switch — or “alt-tab” — out of their gaming session.

Raptr does all of this with its own technology, not through APIs sanctioned by Sony, Microsoft, and the other gaming platforms. This obviously isn’t the ideal solution, but these gaming networks tend to be walled gardens and give third parties minimal access to their communication channels. Still, the fact that Raptr had to build the technology itself makes the barrier to entry that much higher for competitors (assuming the gaming companies don’t try to block Raptr).

Fong, whose past companies include Xfire and Gamers.com, says that Raptr has quietly rolled out some of the service’s biggest improvements in the last few months, and that user growth has reflected this. Overall, he says the service has “north of 1 million users” and is growing by half a million users a month. Given the second statistic it sounds like the service probably has significantly more than 1 million users, but Fong wouldn’t get any more specific.  He did give some predictions for the future, though: he hinted that a year down the line, we may see a ‘Raptr Connect’, which would allow games to tie directly into the service.

Honda isn’t exactly the first Japanese car company that comes to mind when thinking about hybrids. Toyota, thanks to its Prius and hybrid Lexus line-up, won the general populus a few years back, but Honda is set to make another run with the third generation of Honda Civic Hybrids along with a new line of electric vehicles.

These new lines should start hitting streets in both Japan and the US sometime next year for the 2012 model year. This comes on top of the current plans to introduce a hybrid version of the B-segment Honda Fit later this year. Details about the up-coming electric car wasn’t announced, but a few tantalizing specs concerning the next-gen Honda Civic Hybrid leaked a few weeks back and seem to confirm today’s report. Can we say Prius-killer? Yup.

Kukunu is a social travel planning service that puts you, your fellow travelers and your friends in the driver’s seat when it comes to planning your vacation(s). The company, which was one of the winners of Seedcamp Week 2009, has been operating quietly so far, having launched a private beta version at Le Web 2009.

Kukunu is now available in public beta, and the fledgling company has also announced that they’ve raised $400,000 from Seedcamp, Jaina Capital (the fund of Meetic founder and angel investor Marc Simoncini) and Kima Ventures (Xavier Niel).

The Dell Streak, the 5-inch tablet that won the hearts of the technorati last month, is coming to the US and we had a chance to play with it over the past few days. The Android-powered tablet is no iPad but a worthy entrant in the tablet olympics.

The device has a 5-megapixel camera, touchscreen, and built-in GPS. You can use it to watch movies and listen to music and it has a fully-featured webkit browser running on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, making it quite speedy. The device features a built-in GSM modem so you can connect to 3G networks and make calls, making the Streak look like a comically big EVO 4G, except without the 4G.

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