GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

I used to think the best way to grab a nap in the office was to lie down on your belly with an arm outstretched towards a spilled box of paperclips, and your feet touching the door. If somebody interrupted your snooze, the door would hit your feet and wake you, and you could pretend you were picking up the clips.

Then I moved to Spain and started working from home, so I can pretty much siesta when and where I like. Now, there is a third way, the fold-flat chair from Thanko.

The chair looks much like any other office chair but, in that drowsy after-lunch hour the back reclines all the way down, and extra leg-supports flip out from under the seat squab. Both these stages can be operated independently, so you can also sit upright with your feet up on the built-in “ottoman”.

Of course, you still have to come up with an reason for sleeping on the job. I always find “I drank to much at lunchtime” to be a fine excuse. The chair, in black leather, will cost you 49,800 or $600.

Chin chair absorbing [Thanko via Oh Gizmo!]

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One of the major advantages of Windows Phone 7 is its tight integration with Microsoft’s other devices and software. In a terse statement, Microsoft let Mac users know they can eventually expect a light version: “Later in 2010 Microsoft will make a public beta available of a tool that allows Windows Phone 7 to sync select content with Mac computers.”

The “tool” will probably be a version of the Zune desktop software, if a Microsoft UK marketing head early tweet is any indication: “ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m glad to confirm that Mac users would be able to use Zune on their Macs to sync with #WP7… More details soon.”

This makes sense for Microsoft: not only have they always made software for Macs (notably Office), you’d never want to put too many limitations on what PCs you can use with a post-PC handheld. Imagine if Apple had kept the iPod and iTunes Mac-only. Or if the Zune had never included support for Macs. (Wait, that second one actually happened.)

But why would a Mac user want to use a WP7 phone — particularly when the iPhone works so well with a Mac? Basically, it’s the same reason a Mac user might pick an Android phone over an iPhone. Either you like the physical phone better, or (more often) you’re more tied into Google’s or Microsoft’s software than you are to Apple’s.

Here are some scenarios where that might be true.

1. You’re a heavy user of Microsoft Office. Windows Phone 7 has the full Office suite built-in. iPhone’s Office offerings aren’t as strong; it’s a little better for iPad, but not that much.
   
   Windows Office 2011 for Mac is coming at the end of the month, and it’s the best, most-interoperable Office suite available for the Mac. It’s also finally bringing a real Outlook application, not the baby Outlook they called Entourage. (Entourage the application provided the exact opposite experience of the TV show Entourage.) By default, iPhone on the Mac syncs with iCal, Address Book, and Mail; a phone that synced with Outlook could be a huge upgrade.

   This is where the lack of OneNote on Office 2011 for Mac really bothers me; it’s WP7’s Office showpiece, very smartly implemented on the handset and nearly completely useless to Office users on Macs.

2. You’re also a heavy user of Windows Live. Android users love their experience with Gmail, Google Docs, etc. Some of my friends who don’t love Windows love Windows Live, preferring it over Google’s cloud apps and Apple’s MobileMe. Office 2011 and WP7 are both extremely well-integrated with Windows Live. iPhone and Android aren’t.
3. You’re a gamer who loves Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. Apple may have a set-top box, but it doesn’t play games. The iPhone offers a lot of good casual games for handheld, but WP7 will too. If you have a Google TV, it’ll be better with your Android phone; if you have an Xbox 360, it’ll be better with a WP7 phone.
   
   The whole industry is moving towards greater interoperability between computers, handhelds and set-top boxes. The Xbox – WP7 combo will be one of the most versatile handheld-to-boxtop media combinations available. Add a Mac to the mix, rig it to stream content to your Xbox and that’s a pretty powerful power trio. Particularly if you don’t care about buying movies and renting TV shows through iTunes, which is the only advantage an Apple TV would offer.

In the tech world, Mac users are stereotyped as Apple evangelists and/or fanboys, people who’ve bought into the ecosystem from top to bottom. But think about your average student with a MacBook, or your parents you convinced to buy an iMac. They are usually agnostic about this stuff.

Most Mac users probably don’t think long and hard about Apple’s long-term peripheral strategy, or whether Android’s lack of hardware standards will cause them problems down the line. They use Office on their Macs, use PCs at work, play Xbox in their living room and want to buy the phone they like on the carrier they use for a price they can afford. They bought their Macs for the same reason.

The last piece of this puzzle is really how well Windows Phone 7 and the Mac will be able to talk to each other. History bears this out: for a long time, Blackberry desktop software on PC was fantastic, but the version for the Mac wasn’t anywhere close. In my case, it eventually drove me away from the Blackberry and towards the iPhone.

If Microsoft decides that it doesn’t really need to give Mac users anything more than the bare minimum, or that they can capture more value by trying to pull WP7 buyers to the PC platform, then it won’t work. They’ll keep their current customers and add value within their existing ecosystem.

But if Microsoft begins to see their world as one that doesn’t have to be centered around the PC, where they can make great software and compelling experiences for all platforms, and shift more of their institutional weight towards the cloud and the living room, then even Mac users might have to take a long hard look at those new phones.

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Mont Blanc makes unbelievably gorgeous pens, but they also make terrific ink, high-quality points and smart refill technology. The pens cost hundreds of dollars; the refills, about $12. You can cut down a Mont Blanc refill with an exacto-knife and reap all its benefits inside an inexpensive Pilot G2.

Instructables user Kingant posted this hack almost a year ago (“Save $200 in 2 minutes and have the worlds best writing pen“), but it’s still one of my favorites. I show it to everyone who asks me to recommend a high-end pen.

The G2 is already a terrific gel pen, but do its refills have “a silicon plug insert to prevent air bubbles”? Are they “hand-inspected under a microscope” and made to submit to “a writing test to ensure it has perfect writing properties,” including whether they can “write up to 10,000 meters”?

Yes, much of this is manuscript gadget-speak designed to justify the pens’ exorbitant cost. There’s still no cheap hack to let either the Mont Blanc or the Pilot G2 run apps or record audio. And if you use this hack, you won’t have that beautiful Mont Blanc exterior proclaiming to the world how much better your writing instrument is than theirs.

But as Kingant points out, if you use a G2 with a clear case, you’ll be able to see the Mont Blanc label on the refill inside. For less than $15 and a few minutes of your time, that is not bad at all.

Source:wired.com

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PaperPro’s staplers use a patented staple-gun-like spring-and-lever mechanism to turn 8lbs of finger pressure into 30lbs of staple-driving force. They’re quickly attracting a devoted following.

OfficeSupplyGeek does pretty thorough product reviews, so when he says “I have found the only stapler Ill ever use,” I believe him. Paper capacity, ease-of-use, ergonomics, style — the entire range from the teeny Nano (which is the size of a staple remover, but can staple through 12 sheets) to their professional/high-capacity 100-sheet staplers exceeded all expectations.

He even made a video showing the PaperPro throwing a fastener through cardboard with just one finger’s pressure:

I also like the concept of the Long Reach Stapler (pictured at right), which lets you staple across a long sheet of paper rather than along the edge. It looks like a cheap and easy way to make (or repair) your own ‘zines.

PaperPro’s staplers are relatively inexpensive (I priced the midrange Prodigy at $25 on Amazon, compared to $30 for a commercial-grade Swingline with comparable capacity)

Image via PaperPro; video by OfficeSupplyGeek.

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Image from InformationArchitects.jp

In design and intent, the iPad is a focus-producing machine. Nearly the entire device is a screen, and every application consumes the entire screen. Information Architects’ new Writer app brings that same hyperfocused aesthetic to word-processing.

Writer is not, like Pages, a desktop publishing application. It’s not really even a textual editor, in the sense that it supports easy correction or rearrangement of already-typed text. When you put the application in “Focus Mode,” it doesn’t even have spellcheck or cut-and-paste. Instead, it’s all about textual production — writing this phrase, this sentence, this word at this moment. As the creators note, “the idea is to activate it when you get stuck, blinding out everything else.”

It’s not particularly customizable, but again, that’s the point. Don’t screw around picking out margins or a font. We’ve picked it for you — and it’s already optimized for your screen. There are a few smart additions, like Dropbox integration and a “reading time” feature that estimates how long it will take a reader to make their way through your text.

More features and tweaks are (naturally) promised for future versions, as is a desktop app. According to iA, it would actually have been easier to release the desktop application first, but the iPad offered something unique: “In spite of its passive character, the awkward keyboard, the stubborn iOS and its many other faults, the iPad has the power to drag you in and make you forget about the world around you.”

Version 1.0 dropped today and is available in the Apple Store for $4.99. With the iPad getting printing with iOS 4.2, there’s a good chance we may see see document production apps for iOS, each offering something distinctive, explode.

H/T to Liz Danzico/Bobulate.

Source:wired.com

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Alternate MS Office icons by talwayseb, via CrystalXP.net

Microsoft is a giant company working in many different fields, but in the consumer market, apart from XBox, it does one thing really well: software. After some high-profile, quickly-aborted misadventures in mobile, that’s what it’s going to focus on from now on.

Microsoft’s Tivanka Ellawala told the WSJ that the company’s done with smartphone hardware (beyond in-house prototypes, presumably): We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.

What kinds of platforms? I don’t know — how about the iPad?

On Wednesday, Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott confirmed the rumors on Twitter: “Shhh…. It’s true: Microsoft is working on iPad apps.” Makes perfect sense to me:

• Microsoft was never fully behind smartphone/tablet hardware;
• Its mobile OS is battling stiff competition on all sides;
• They’ve always been a multi-platform company;
• And, um, they’ve already got apps on the iPhone. (Bing. For now.)

So besides search, what are we talking about here? Microsoft Office? (Which, remember, includes a LOT of apps, not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.) Games? Messenger? Frontend clients for Windows Live? Specialized applications for enterprise clients? Virtual PC, to mix it up with VMWare’s anticipated virtualization apps? No one knows.

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Windows Phone 7 Office Image via Microsoft.

Traditionally, Microsoft has been a software company, leveraging its office suites and operating systems, but selling applications for any compatible hardware and platform. For smartphones in particular, its strategy has been to supply the software and let other companies worry about developing the phones. So why not go all the way and sell its software for every device on every platform?

That’s what Business Insider’s Dan Frommer proposes the company do: “Microsoft should develop Office apps for the iPad, Android, Chrome OS, BlackBerry tablet, and any other computing platform that is likely to become popular over the next 5-10 years,” adding that “if Microsoft wants to keep people tied into its Office suite, it needs to go where the people are going.”

Office is integrated into the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, but would compete on several fronts in smartphone and tablet platforms, including iWork on Apple’s iPad, Google Docs on the mobile web, and Dataviz’s multi-platform Documents To Go, just acquired by Blackberry maker RIM.

Frommer sees RIM’s purchase of Documents To Go as a defense against the possibility of Microsoft introducing an Office app for Blackberry. Ironically, if RIM stops active development of Documents To Go for other platforms, that could create just the multi-platform opening needed to entice Microsoft to swoop in.

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Image from DataViz.com.

With its flagship mobile office suite Documents To Go, software company DataViz makes some of the most popular productivity applications for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mobile, and Android. Now that RIM has bought the better chunk of DataViz to work for Blackberry, its days as a cross-platform mobile superstar might be numbered.

The deal had been reported as done on Friday by Crackberry.com, reportedly for $50m in cash, shortly after DataViz had announced that they were cancelling development for Palm. RIM confirmed the acquisition yesterday in a statement: “RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform.” Translation: it’s all ours, now.

Even if RIM just lets its client apps for other platforms drift along for a while, they’re still a good business: as CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt points out, “fifteen dollars a pop for iPhone business professionals buying Documents To Go for iPhone isn’t a business to quickly pull from.”

Still, having Documents To Go in-house offers RIM terrific leverage. They can use its InTact cloud-syncing software for all media files on the Blackberry; offer the premium version for free to enterprise customers; and package a new suite of productivity and enterprise apps for its forthcoming BlackPad tablet. By buying Documents To Go and its software team from DataViz, RIM just solidified its position as the “serious” and “productive” smartphone company.

Source:wired.com

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For several years, Denise Carlevato has studied millions of mouse clicks and keystrokes made by anonymous computer users from all over the world. Her objective: to make Microsoft Office better fit the way millions of people work.

Months before Microsoft rolled out the latest version of its productivity suite, Office 2010, 9 million people downloaded its beta version to test the software and provide feedback. As part of the program, Microsoft collected 2 million comments from beta testers. An additional 600 people participated in Microsoft’s Virtual Research Lab, where Carlevato and her colleagues could observe how people were using new features.

In a sense, it was a massive, controlled crowdsourcing project. That’s just what you have to do to cater to as broad an audience as possible, says Carlevato, who has worked as a Microsoft usability engineer for 10 years.

“We do our darnedest to make sure the features we put into our product are the things people ask for,” Carlevato told Wired.com. “We know from watching them work that they really need it.”

Though some tech observers have predicted Microsoft’s downfall after falling behind in the smartphone game and being one-upped by Apple in market capitalization, many agree that reports of the software titan’s inevitable demise are greatly exaggerated. Microsoft as a whole remains hugely profitable, and Office has consistently been the most lucrative part of Microsoft’s business, raking in billions of dollars each quarter, even exceeding sales of Windows.

And although Google offers a competitive productivity suite, Google Docs, for free, Microsoft still has a major advantage: 67 percent of U.S. online consumers regularly use Office, while only 4 percent use Google Docs, according to Forrester Research.

“In some ways, the ‘Office versus Google Docs’ debate doesnt merit a lot of consideration — its still no competition,” said J.P. Gownder, a Forrester analyst. “In terms of usage and penetration, Google Docs remains a failure – so far, anyway.”

But staying in the lead with productivity software isn’t easy, and to retain the loyalty of millions, Microsoft goes to great lengths to determine what customers want. For Office 2010 beta, Microsoft included a feature called “Send a Smile,” a comment box for testers to submit feedback and suggestions for improvement. Of the 2 million Send a Smile comments, 81,000 included the senders’ e-mail addresses so the engineers working to improve Office could follow up with them.

To analyze the Send a Smile feedback, Microsoft built a database and programmed algorithms to classify and tag comments under certain categories, while filtering out biased feedback and useless drivel. From that point, researchers manually read every single comment to determine necessary tweaks and additions to Office.

Source:wired.com

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Cisco announced this afternoon that in 2011 it will be launching an Android-based tablet, named the Cius, aimed squarely at the business market.

Cisco has always been an enterprise-focused company, and the Cius is its shot at bringing businesses on board the tablet bandwagon. Video conferencing, the product which Cisco is perhaps best known for, is front and center both literally and figuratively – there’s a 720p-capable cameras on the front of the Cius, in addition to the 5 megapixel camera on the back.

In an effort to get the Cius into briefcases and suitcases all over the world, the 7-inch device weighs only 1.15 pounds. The Cius will ship with 3G capability, WiFi, eight-hour battery life, HD audio and video out, and tight integration with all of Cisco’s other business applications as well as the huge Android market.

There’s no word yet on what the device will cost, but it promises to make Android a little more business-friendly and to make getting things done on the road a little easier . Even if it won’t have all the great entertainment of the iPad, maybe that’s a good thing for business users.

(Photo: Courtesy Cisco)

Source:wired.com

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