A BlackBerry Without Keys
Confession time: When I first heard about the possibility of a touchscreen BlackBerry, I was super-skeptical. It sounded like an iPhone wannabee–and what’s a BlackBerry without tiny plastic keys? But the BlackBerry Storm, which will be available on Verizon “soon,” is clearly more than a boring iPhone clone, and it doesn’t represent an abandonment of the things that make a BlackBerry a BlackBerry. When you use the on-scren keyboard, the screen depresses slightly and provides haptic feedback to simulate real keypresses; the phone works on Verizon’s excellent network in the U.S. and does GSM almost everywhere else; it includes Documents to Go’s full suite of Office-compatible editing tools rather than plain document viewers. I still haven’t laid hands on a Storm, but I’m looking forward to doing so–even though I’m afraid it’ll beat the long-overdue BlackBerry Bold, which I’m even more excited about, to market.

Read more at: Network World

Apple Notebooks: Rumor This Week, Reality Next Week
On the Apple front, the week began with a rumor about a rumor: that the supposed Apple project codenamed “Brick” was not a product, but an amazing new manufacturing process for carving notebook cases out of solid blocks of aluminum. Next came fuzzy spy photos of what were said to be new MacBook cases. Then bloggers began to question whether the much buzzed about Apple portable event on October 14th would be a go. And then Apple invited press and analysts to…a portable event on October 14th. Possibly featuring an $800 MacBook. Whew! Technologizer will cover the Apple event live from Cupertino. but it can’t possibly keep us busier than this week’s scuttlebutt did. And hey, it’ll all be true, for sure.

Are Two AMDs Better Than One?
Anyone who loves underdogs has gotta have a soft spot for AMD: Through decades of ups and downs, the scrappy CPU company has been the only true competitor to the far larger Intel. It’s also been one of the few chip companies that both designs and manufactures its processors. But AMD made a long-standing rumor official this week: With the help of investments from Abu Dhabi, it will split into a chip-design company and a chip manufacturer. The move will mark the end of the longest rivalry in CPUs–well, not the end, really, but the start of a new chapter. Should consumers care? Yup–they should hope that the two new companies partner to make next-generation chips in a nimble, cost-efficient fashion that not only keeps the race with Intel alive but quickens it.

YouTube is Looking More Like the Boob Tube
There was a time when some pundits declared that short-form user-generated content of the sort that YouTube made famous would render the longer, profesional programming on the big TV networks and cable channels irrelevant. Maybe someday, but YouTube has struck a deal with CBS to put old fashioned TV on YouTube, including Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210, Californication, and other shows. They’re the longest items ever on YouTube, and possibly the most nakedly commercial efforts ever associated with YouTube parent company Google, at least in terms of presentation–there will be ads before, during, and after the shows. And it all sets YouTube up for more direct competition with Hulu, the all-professional video hub that’s a joint venture between NBC and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Read more at: NewTeeVee

Yet Another New Ask.com
The most famous change Ask.com ever made was when it dumped its butler mascot and the name Ask Jeeves. But the smallest of the big search engines does more major makeovers more often than its larger rivals, and it’s rolled out yet another one. The new Ask.com dumps much of what made last year’s Ask.com upgrade distinctive in favor a look and feel that’s certainly functional, but less strikingly different than that of Google.

Apple Ends NDA, Doesn’t Disclose All
The blanket non-disclosure agreement that prevented iPhone developers from discussing the platform in public ended last week, when Apple published a statement saying that the company had put it in place to prevent its ideas from being ripped off, but conceding that it was more trouble than it was worth. The change in policy followed increasing discontent over the NDA and its effects and side effects, such as how it had discouraged anyone from publishing books about programming for the iPhone. The end of the iPhone’s all-encompassing NDA is good news indeed, but it doesn’t mean the end of the era of Apple secrecy, or the end of controversy over the company’s iPhone-related policies: As far as anyone can tell, it still maintains that it’s wrong for anyone to develop iPhone apps that are sort of like Apple’s own. But Apple hasn’t explained such reasoning publicly, let alone convinced anyone of its validity. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: I still kind decide whether to be giddily optimistic or resolutely pessimistic about the fate of the iPhone as a software platform.

Read more at: Daring Fireball

Here Comes Windows Cloud, Whatever That May Be
At a UK IT conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, casually mentioned that Microsoft is working on something code-named Windows Cloud, and would have more news in a month or so. He apparently didn’t really explain what it was, but it seems reasonable to guess, at least, that it might be a portfolio of platform services for Web developers akin to Amazon’s Web Services. I have one prediction: Windows Cloud won’t be a version of Windows that consumers need to think about, any more than they need to keep tabs on Amazon’s services or on Microsoft’s own .Net tools. (Okay, scratch that: I’ve occasionally tried to install software applications and been told my PC needed a .Net update first.) I also have one request: Please, Microsoft, call it something other than Windows Cloud, a name which is destined to sound silly and retro by the middle of 2009 or thereabouts.

Read more at: Mashable, InfoWorld

RealDVD Arrives, Departs For Limbo
I kind of like RealNetworks’ RealDVD software, which was designed to let consumers copy DVDs to their PC’s hard drive without breaking any laws. And now I’m really, really rooting it–because it got ensnared in duelling lawsuits between Real and Hollywood the moment that Real released it last week. At the moment, a court has told Real to pull it off the market altogether, supposedly only until Tuesday. If Real wins its lawsuits, it’ll be only a minor victory for consumer rights–RealDVD both retains existing copy protection and layers on more of it–but if it loses, it’ll be a major setback.

Windows XP: Not Dead. Again!
It was released in October, 2001–and it’s increasingly feeling like it may outlive us all. Windows XP, which major PC manufacturers still ship as a “downgrade” disc with Windows Vista computers to avoid the wrath of Vista-disparaging businesses, got another new lease on life last week when Microsoft extended the downgrade option’s supposed termination from January 31st of next year to July 31st. Is there any business other than software which regularly pits manufacturers against their customers, with the manufacturers trying to kill off products which the customers still want to buy? The tension between Microsoft and Windows users over XP’s replacement with Vista has felt almost like the New Coke debacle played out in slo-mo.

Read more at: Computerworld

The Day the Music Didn’t Die
Would Apple really shut down iTunes–the country’s largest music purveyor of any sort–rather than raise its prices? It was supposedly willing to when it looked like royalty rates per song might go from nine cents to fifteen. But the Copyright Royalty Board has set the fee for digital downloads at the same price as that for traditional media through 2012, so iTunes lives on, as does 99-cent music. (Although both Amazon and Wal-Mart routinely undercut Apple’s prices while presumably paying the same royalties.) The good news on the iTune front leaves us with more time to worry abou the fate of Pandora and other streaming music sites; they still need a signature from President Bush to avoid royalty hikes that might put ’em out of business. Sign that bill, Mr. President, and let us move on to other matters!

The T-Mobile G1 Gets Real
You can fixate on the ways in which it’s similar to an iPhone. (Big display, accelerometer, GPS, Wi-Fi, YouTube, app store, and lots more.) You can fixate on the ways it’s dissimilar. (Open platform, no multi-touch, no full-blown video player, lack of Exchange support, odd proprietary headphone jack, and lots more.) Whichever way you look at it, the T-Mobile G1, the first phone built on Google’s Android OS, is a significant product. It’s already been the subject of controversy, and there’s much we still don’t know about the G1 and Android in general. But you gotta think that T-Mobile ended up mostly happy with the reception so far–especially since it’s apparently already seling scads of them to existing T-Mobile customers on pre-order, which is the only way it’s selling the phone so far. (It goes on sale on October 22nd; your humble reporter may be among those in line to snap one up.)

Read more at: TmoNews, Engadget Mobile

The First Rule of iPhone
It’s become a familiar pattern: Developer submits iPhone application to Apple. Apple refuses to offer it through the App Store. Developer blogs about Apple’s explanation. Apple gets pummeled in the blogosphere. How has Apple reacted? By telling developers that the non-disclosure agreement they signed concerning the iPhone forbids them from telling anyone why their program was rejected. And the same NDA has left book companies afraid to publish books to teach programmers how to develop for the iPhone. A couple of months ago, the iPhone platform seemed like the most exciting thing to hit the tech world in eons; at the moment, I get depressed just thinking about it. This too shall pass, or so I hope…

Read more at: Macworld, Furbo.org

A Less Appy Windows
We still don’t know all that much about Windows 7, but news broke this week that Microsoft is stripping out Windows’ apps for e-mail, photo editing, and video editing, and will offer them only as free downloads. I think that’s a swell idea for both the operating system and the applications–I was never clear on why Microsoft often highlighted tools like Windows Movie Maker in Windows ads when they weren’t core to the OS, and apps bundled with an OS that’s only updated every few years are doomed to feel permanently stale compared to Web-centric rivals. I still think that Windows should evolve into a sort of DOS for the 21st century–a piece of reliable and unglamorous middleware. I’m sure that Microsoft isn’t going to follow that strategy, but I’m glad to see even small signs that the company is tippytoing back to basics.

A New Way to Buy Music in Physical Form
I kind of thought that we’d seen our final new physical media for music. But memory card kingpin SanDisk has introduced slotMusic, which repurposes MicroSD into a format for album distribution. It’s got the support of major music labels, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart, so it may be a mistake to declare it dead on arrival. But the selection of albums on slotMusic at launch will be tiny, the cards themselves are so tiny that they seem like more hassle than they’re worth, and the format is arriving just as digital downloads are poised to render physical media irrelevant. Okay, on second thought I will declare slotMusic DOA.

Read more at: Computerworld

Steve Ballmer is Anything But Retiring
Bring out the cryogenic freezer! Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who had supposedly been planning to retire at 62 in 2018, has apparently said that he won’t follow recent retiree Bill Gates into that good night until Microsoft’s Live Search has a larger market share than Google. How does the race stand at the moment? Google has 63 percent share, and Live Search has 8.3 percent and dropping. I sorta admire the bravado behind such a pledge, but I don’t know if any number of developers, developers, developers will prove enough to close that gap.

Thank John McCain for That Pearl
So it’s like this: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a policy advisor to Senator and Republican nominee for the presidency John McCain brandished a BlackBerry in front of some reporters and told them that it was a miracle that Sen. McCain had helped to create. He was apparently making reference to the senator’s involvement with telecommunications legislation. But you’d think that any policy aide who remembers the legend of Al Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet would be really, really, really careful about saying anything that sounded even remotely like it involved a candidate having invented anything relating to communications. And hey, if telecommunications legislation is enough to claim credit for a specific phone, wouldn’t the iPhone have been hipper? (Not to mention more patriotic–the BlackBerry is a Canadian product.)

Read more at: Gizmodo

And You Thought Alienware Made Expensive PCs
$25,000 for a Windows computer? It sounds a tad on the pricey side, but it’s really a bargain–the computer in question is from supercomputer pioneer Cray. The http://www.cray.com/products/CX1.aspx, powered by Intel Xeons and running Windows HPC Server 2008, is the cheapest supercomputer the company has ever made. It’s probably overkill for even my most demanding tasks, but the vault-like case is pretty darn neat. Maybe Cray should sell a $1200 version with that housing and a Core 2 Duo inside.

You Want Fries With That Zune?
I’m not sure if Microsoft and McDonalds have ever worked together before, but it was probably inevitable that they’d get together. And now they have–courtesy of a new deal that will give three years of free Wi-Fi at the hamburger giant to owners of the Zune, Microsoft’s MP3 player. The free connectivity will let them buy music wirelessly. Not bad, but also far from world-changing. How about a deal that would let Windows Vista users surf for free at McDonald’s and make everybody else pay up?

Another Google Outage
TechCrunch reported today about an outage for some users of Google’s Custom Search service, which lets anyone create a search engine, that TC said lasted for at least twelve hours. At last report, Google fixed the problem and apologized. But it’s still more evidence that even the company that knows more than any other about delivering reliable service to millions of people can’t promise perfect service. You gotta wonder whether the main Google site is immune from serious problems–and what sort of headlines it would make if that service ever went down for half a day.

Read more at: TechCrunch

More on App Store’s Application Acceptance Policies
Blogger Niall Kennedy has a nice piece digging into the details of what happened with Podcaster, the iPhone app which Apple rejected from its App Store, whereupon the author used Apple’s “ad-hoc” distribution to get it into the hands of anyone who’d donate $10 to him. Niall says that the developer may have made $11,000 over the weekend. Not too shabby–especially since he doesn’t have to share the proceeds with Apple, unlike companies that sell apps through the App Store.

Best Buy Snaps Up Napster
The country’s biggest consumer electronics retailer just spent $121 million to buy Napster, the subscription music service that borrowed its name from Shawn Fanning’s P2P service but hasn’t been able to convince anywhere near as many people to pay for their songs. As music inevitably goes entirely digital, I see why Best Buy would want to be involved–it’s not going to be all that long until those rows of CDs in its stores are just gone. But it’s hard not to think that Napster in its current, non-iPod-compatible form is doomed, and unlike archrival Rhapsody, it hasn’t launched a DRM-free music store. I’m guessing Best Buy is interested less in Napster in its current form and more in the potential of the technology to power services yet to come.

Read more at: PaidContent.org

Buy Once, Play Anywhere?
Best Buy, Microsoft, Sony, Intel, and other companies involved in consumer electronics are teaming to form something called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem. The goal is to let consumers buy movies and other content once, and then play them on a variety of devices. At first blush, the idea is appealing, but it’s hard not to be cynical skeptical about any initiative which involves what sounds like a new and complicated form of DRM. And Apple isn’t part of the group–and it seems unlikely that it’ll join, since it probably just isn’t in Steve Jobs’ DNA to get involved in a form of DRM that his company doesn’t control. “Buy once, play everywhere except on anything made by Apple” just doesn’t sound that compelling.

Podcaster Gets Onto the iPhone
The iPhone community is still in an uproar over Apple’s apparent rejection of an app called Podcaster on the grounds that it duplicates functionality in iTunes. Now Podcaster’s developer is using Ad-Hoc Distribution, a feature designed by Apple to let enterprises put custom applications onto iPhones, to distribute his program to folks who make a $9.99 donation. I’ve ponied up the money and will let you know what transpires; I find it hard to believe, though, that Apple won’t figure out a way to prevent end runs around the App Store by anyone whose program gets rejected.

A Handheld That Does E-Mail–and Just E-Mail
Peek is a new handheld device that looks kinda like a BlackBerry and lets you do e-mail. And that’s all it does–you can’t make a phone call or instant message or listen to music on the thing. In other words, it’s a bit like the BlackBerries of a decade ago. The device’s manufacturer says it’s targeting folks who don’t want the cost or complexity of a smartphone with a data plan. My instinct is to be skeptical of its chances for success, since there’s a long history of e-mail-only devices that haven’t gone much of anywhere. (Anyone remember the MailStation?) But Peek apparently does what it does well, and I admire the guts of anyone who tries to make a go of it with a product that’s not the same ol’ same ol’.

Read more at: SF Gate

The Father of the Web Starts a Foundation
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is one of my heroes. How could he not be? The guy is the living embodiment of the potential of the Internet to make the world a better place, and he aims to do just that with the World Wide Web Foundation. The new organization, launched with a $5 million grant, hopes to ensure that the Web is free, open, and robust, and to spread it to everybody on the planet. In a speech announcing the project, Berners-Lee noted that 80 percent of human beings are said not to have access to the Web. That’s both alarming and exciting–for all the things the Web has done to change the world for the better, it’s got infinite potential to do even more in the decades to come.

Like a Genius Bar, Except Without the Black T-Shirts and the Bar Part
The quirky Gates-Seinfeld Vista ad that doesn’t mention Vista may be today’s biggest tech story, but it’s only one front in an elaborate plan to reignite interest in Windows which Microsoft made public today. Another initiative involves sending “Microsoft Gurus” to retail stores such as Best Buy to answer consumers’ questions about Windows PCs. It’s an obvious knockoff of Apple’s Genius Bars, but if it’s done right, it’s an excellent idea: One of the problems with most computer retailers other than Apple Stores is that staffers’ levels of expertise is erratic to say the least. The Gurus aren’t going to be able to replicate the Genius experience–Geniuses fix computers as well as provide general advice–but they stand a better chance of making life better for Windows users than Jerry Seinfeld ever could.

Read more at: All About Microsoft

Joost in the Browser
Joost, the video service launched last year by the creators of Skype and Kazaa, arrived with great fanfare. But compared to newer services like Hulu, it gets remarkably little attention these days. It’s getting attention today, though: It’s going to reportedly dump its client application in favor of a new approach that’s entirely browser-based. That represents a major shift in strategy, but makes a lot of sense. You gotta think that most media services will go browser-only over time–maybe even including iTunes eventually.

Attack of the Facebot
A team of researchers in Greece and Singapore built a “Photo of the Day” Facebook app that held a secret: It was designed to silently launch denial-of-service attacks behind the scenes. The researchers also speak of the possibility of Facebook apps to deposit malware on users’ computers or steal personal data. None of which is really surprising–Facebook applications are, after all, applications…and when you let applications of any sort onto your PC you must accept the possibility of dangerous ones sneaking through.

Google Chrome: Cool! Vulnerable!
Most reviews of Google’s Chrome browser are at least guardedly positive. But browser fans aren’t the only ones downloading it and taking it for a test drive–so are the hackers, good and bad, who find holes in software that bad guys can take advantage of. Google is taking note and working on fixes, and like many a software company before it, it’s politely asking security experts to be careful about how they disclose vulnerabilities. The company presumably knew what it was getting into when it decided to go into the browser business–let’s hope it staffed up with security experts of its own.

Read more at: Zero Day

One Laptop Per Amazon
Starting in November, Amazon.com will sell the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO “$100 laptops” under the “Give One Get One” program that lets buyers pay for one laptop for a deserving child in a developing nation, and one for themselves. That’s a huge relief, since the idea is so worthy but the OLPC Foundation proved incapable of promptly and smoothly delivering the laptops to buyers last holiday season when it tried to do the program without a merchant partner. I finally got my XO months after I ordered it, but I’m tempted to try again this year, so that another kid who needs one gets it.

Hulu Scoops the Nets
Hulu, the joint venture between NBC and Fox that’s probably the best stab yet at bringing network-style TV to the Web, is hosting a network-like rollout of the fall season’s series premieres and new episodes of old shows. Not only that, but it’ll have the first episodes of four new and returning shows–Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, and Life–a week before they’re on broadcast TV. That’s a far cry from the more typical tactic of delaying Web premieres of TV programming so they don’t compete with the networks. And another instance of Hulu being a shockingly with-it entertainment service for something owned and operated by Old Hollywood.

Read more at: TechCrunch

Broadband Price Wars
The Wall Street Journal has a story on price cuts for broadband service–the examples given involve DSL from Verizon and AT&T (and actually, the AT&T news involves a guarantee that prices won’t increase), but the Journal says that some analysts think that cable will get cheaper, too. Good news, but let’s hope that broadband prices drop on a real, permanent basis–the teaser pricing that both cable and phone companies use to hook you in on the basis of a cheap price for the first six months is nearly as much of a pox on consumers as rebates. I’d love to see the FTC (or whoever is in charge of such things) mandate that you can’t promote a teaser rate without listing the ongoing rate in type that’s at least as large.

iPhone Browsing Doubles
Browser research company NetApplications says that its data shows that Web browsing with iPhones has doubled since the release of the iPhone 3G last month. As a percentage of all browsing, that done on iPhones remains tiny: It’s .3 percent, according to NetApplications. Fun fact: Four percent of all visits to Technologizer to date have come from folks using iPhones. I’m not sure what that means, other than that this site is a bit ahead of the curve: I expect the day to come when the majority of Web browsing is done on phones.

Read more at: Cnet

IE8’s Weight Problem
The Exo Performance Network has published some facts and figures on Internet Explorer 8’s footprint, and they’re…well, they’re kind of appalling. IE8, Exo says, takes more RAM than Windows XP. No, not the XP version of IE–more RAM than the entire operating system. And it’s over twice as resource-intensive as Firefox. I’ve ranted about bloatware for years–usually bringing up the fact that I can remember the day when programmers were lucky if they had 16K to work with. As much of computing moves from the desktop to the cloud, bloat will be more of a problem than ever: If I ran Microsoft, I’d be working very hard to ensure that the company gets really good at writing applications that are really skinny. Or at least not morbidly obese.

Read more at: InfoWorld, exo.blog

Facebook’s Virtual-Gift Windfall
Lightspeed Venture Partners has done the math on Facebook’s digital gifts–those little images of everything from hugging teddy bears to sushi to boxer shorts that sell for a buck apiece–and says that it thinks Facebook is making around $35 million a year from them. Fascinating. And scary. Betcha the guy who invented the Pet Rock didn’t do nearly so well.

Google Finally Does a Browser
Years ago, it was fun to talk about the idea of Google releasing a browser. Google, however, didn’t seem interested…until today, when we learned that it’s been working on what sounds like an extremely ambitious one. I’m always cautious about predicting great things for a new Google product (such as, say, Knol) until they’ve proven themselves. But I don’t think it’s irrational exuberance to say that Chrome could be huge. Especially if everything that Google claims for it–speed, security, better tabs, and the ability to run Web apps well–pans out. Even if it fizzles, I’m looking forward it: There’s not much in the whole tech world that’s more fun to cover than the browser wars, the arrival of Chrome will surely signal the begining of Browser War 3.0.

Read more at: BoomTown, TechCrunch

iTunes Albums Go Interactive
Music industry trade publication Music Week is reporting that Snow Patrol will release an enhanced album on Apple’s iTunes Store next month designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch and featuring lyrics, photos, and other bonuses. Sounds cool–to me, the trimmings that come with albums have been going downhill ever since vinyl went away and we lost nice big pieces of artwork on covers and booklets with type in a size that was actually legible.

Maybe They Shoulda Called It the Commodore 65
I spent time at the IFA electronics show in Berlin last week, but somehow managed to miss the news that Comnmodore has released an eee PC-style “netbook” mini-notebook. It looks pretty generic and may never be available in the U.S. And I’m aware that the current Commodore has nothing in common with the one responsible for the PET, C64, and Amiga except the name. But I still can’t pass up an opportunity to mention Commodore–even though the device’s name, the UMMD 8010/F, may be the blandest one ever attached to a Commodore product.

Read more at: Lilliputing

Gustav Giving
Both the McCain and Obama campaigns urged Americans to give to the efforts to help folks impacted by Hurricane Gustav, and both provided details on how to make donations via SMS. Texting GIVE to 2HELP (24357) results in a $5 donation to Red Cross disaster efforts. And both the McCain and Obama homepages have been turned over to donation messages. Let’s hope that people give generously, and that nobody derives any political advantage from this.

Read more at: Cnet

Buy a Nokia, Get Free Music
Nokia has announced that it’s launching Comes With Music, a pretty bold attempt to take on the iPhone onslaught, in the UK. People who buy Comes With Music phones will get access to 2.1 million songs; they can download all they want to their phone, and keep them on that phone forever. What’s the catch? Well, you can only do your downloading for the first year you own the phone, and can’t transfer the songs to any other phone you buy. And 2.1 million songs is a smallish selection by today’s standards. Rumor has it that Apple is working on something similar (although I’m skeptical); if nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see if Nokia’s foray into all-you-can-eat music shakes up the market at all.

IFA Wrap-Up
I’d somehow managed to spend seventeen years as a tech journalist without ever attending a European tradeshow, even though some of the biggest in the business are held here, such as CeBIT and Mobile World Congress. So I’m glad to have had the chance to attend IFA as a speaker (for which I was paid a fee). And I’m leaving feeling kind of upbeat about the U.S. technology industry. Yes, we’re behind in key areas such as wireless and broadband. But as sprawling and jammed with products as IFA was, it felt like a recap of January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the U.S. is clearly ahead of Europe when it comes to HDTV and digital entertainment. It’ll be interesting to see just how long we maintain that lead, though.

Read more at: Technologizer (here’s all my IFA coverage)

GMail by Any Other Name
I think I knew that Google doesn’t have the trademark to the name Gmail here in Germany, and is therefore forced to call the service Google Mail. Even so, just about every time I tried to log into my account here, I forgot and went to www.gmail.com, where I got this kinda prickly-sounding message: “We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead…Oh, and we’d like to link [mail.google.com] but we’re not allowed to do that either. Bummer.” According to Ars Technica, a recent EU court victory for Daniel Giersch, who operates a service called G-Mail, means that GMail is forced to go by Google Mail across the continent. Double bummer.

Abroad With the iPhone
I brought my iPhone 3G to Berlin, and it worked just fine–as good or better as in the U.S., which made sense since GSM networks are so robust here. I still used it sparingly, though, since international roaming costs are not only extremely high but pretty mysterious–I couldn’t tell for sure how much it cost me each time I checked my e-mail, and i didn’t even dare do anything bandwidth-intensive like listen to streaming radio. Ironically enough, AT&T introduced cheaper international data plans partway through my trip. At $120 and $200 a month (for 100MB and 200MB respectively) they’re still way, way more pricey than the $30 we statesiders pay for unlimited data at home, though.

Read more at: CNet

Silicon Valley, German Style
One of the highlights of my Berlin visit was a field trip we took to Adlershof, an area in Berlin that’s known as Germany’s answer to Silicon Valley. It’s in what was formerly East Germany, and is chock-full of scientists and engineers, many of them formerly East Germans, who are founding and running successful high-tech startups. One big difference: Adlershof is operated by the German government as an initiative to encourage development of the technology industry. Another difference: Amazingly few of Adlershof’s startups fail. The Adlershof representative we visited with says that’s both good and bad: Failures are rare in part because German businesspeople tend to be wary about risk-taking in general, since failure is embarrassing. In the U.S., gambles that could lead to failure are part of life–and so Silicon Valley has both more companies that never go anywhere and more that are massive successes.

Read more at: Wikipedia

Meeting of the Blogging Minds
Another highlight–and the most fun of the three panels I participated in–was one that brought together bloggers from the U.S. and Germany. Participants besides moi included metablogger Robert Scoble, CBS News’s Larry Magid, BusinessWeek’s Steve Wildstrom, and two leading German bloggers: Thomas Knuwer and Robert Basic. Knuwer and Basic said that acceptance of blogging and the Internet in general in Germany lags behind the U.S.–again, in part because German folks stress out over the prospect of failing in public, which you inevitably do from time to time when you blog without an editor. Knuwer and Basic, however, were clearly as smart and passionate as any American blogger. And I’m going to check out what they’re up to–even if I have to run their stuff through Google Translate to make sense of them.

Read more (in German!) at: Indiskretion, Basic Thinking

Maybe They Should Call it “ComCapped”
Remember when online services charged by the hour? It had a profound effect on folks used ’em, since they always had to watch the meter. I thought about that as the news broke that Comcast plans to put a 250GB cap on the amount of data a cable customer can download each month, starting on October 1st. The limit won’t crimp most people’s enjoyment of the Net; supposedly, it’ll only impact one out of a thousand Comcast customers. But as the things that people do on the Net evolve, today’s more-than-enough limit may become tomorrow’s onerous restriction–there was a time when a 250 megabyte cap wouldn’t have felt restrictive. Comcast, of course, looks as the limit as a way to help ensure that average customers get the bandwidth they need. But I wonder if it plans to adjust the cap as those average customers need more gigs each month?

Read more at: ZDNet, DSL Reports, GigaOM

“Mac Touch” Patent
A couple of days ago, I expressed doubt that Apple was going to release a touch-screen Mac any time soon. Now there’s discussion of another new Apple patent on what sure looks like a touch-screen Mac. Apple, like any inventive company, patents lots of stuff that never turns into real products, such as an iMac-like computer with a phone cradle built in.  And the new patent was filed in April, which would seem to suggest that any “Mac Touch” is still months or years off. But it’s fair enough to say that Apple is at least intrigued by the idea of putting a touch UI on a device larger than an iPhone. And I’m intrigued by the idea of them doing it, too–if they can figure out a way to make it less clunky than most touch-driven PC interfaces to date.

Bold Anticipation
We still don’t know when AT&T plans to start selling the new BlackBerry Bold in the U.S., but positive reviews of the new device continue to surface. Gizmodo’s tried one, and is extremely enthusiastic about the phone’s new keyboard design, its high-resolution screen, its modern browser, and other improvements. More and more, I’m thinking that the superphone wars will boil down to an iPhone-Bold confrontation for the result of 2008, with possible skirmishes involving the first Google Android device, apparently arriving later this year from T-Mobile. One thing about the Bold that remains a mystery is its price: Gizmodo theorizes that it may be $249 or $299 with contract. Not unreasonable, but not an, ahem, bold move to match the iPhone’s $199 starting price, either.

Read more at: Gizmodo

iPhone Security Fix
The flaw in the iPhone 3G’s software that let snoops bypass password protection by using the emergency-call feature will be fixed soon, according to Macworld. Apple spokesperson Jennifer Bowcock calls the hole “minor”–a description that’s certainly subject to debate–and says that an update in September will seal it up. I still think that it’s safest to consider password protection as a feature that makes it somewhat more difficult for folks to get at your information, rather than one that lets you stop worrying about data theft.

Read more at: Macworld

Microsoft’s Search Payout Doesn’t Pay Off
In May, Microsoft tried to jumpstart Windows Live Search by offering users discounts on products they purchased from users–an attempt, in effect, to steal market share from Google by paying folks to use the search engine. Has it worked? TechCrunch says no: At first, there were signs that Live Search’s share was bubbling up, but the latest data shows it bubbling back down again. On one hand, that’s kind of reassuring: Maybe people would rather use the best search engine than the one that throws money their way. On the other, I like healthy competition and worry about Google’s utter dominance of search. I sure hope that other companies–be they behemoths like Microsoft or upstarts like Cuil–figure out ways to not only stay in the race but chip away at Google’s dominance over time. Even if it’s one of the thorniest challenges there is on the Internet.