Red Laser Update!

It is just Update-a-Go-Go this week! Monday, I published my review of Red Laser, Tuesday, Google Voice goes out of Beta which prompted yesterday's update, and Thursday amidst all the iPhone hype, eBay announces that they have purchased Red Laser and that the app is now Free. What will today bring?

Yup, on Monday it was on sale for $0.99, and on Thursday it is a new Free app. What an odd turn. Then again a bunch of apps have gone free to gain market share after the iPhone 4 launch.

It will be interesting to see where Red Laser goes now that eBay is running the show. I imagine that eBay integration will be one of the first new features to be added. But I could also see Red Laser's technology finding its way into point of sale applications, or even being able to list something on eBay by scanning the barcode on the box. I guess we'll see.

Tip of the hat to @Odin1Eye for the tip and to the good folks at AppAdvice for carrying the story that caught Odin's eye.

#FollowFriday - @MacOSKen: The latest news on all things "i", read in a funny voice.

This week's FollowFriday winner is @MacOSKen, the Twitter stream of Ken Ray and of the Mac OS Ken podcast. Ken is a broadcaster and a Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad enthusiast, and doing a podcast about the latest Apple-related news lets him exercise his passions without being arrested or otherwise coming under public censure. The fact that he injects massive amounts of humor into his podcast (with just a touch of blasphemy) makes his podcast immensely entertaining and not at all like a boring daily recitation of tech news. Um... right. In addition to the Mac OS Ken daily news podcast (available Monday through Friday), Ken also publishes Mac OS Ken Day Six, a subscription based podcast of commentary, editorials and interviews that helps defray the costs of building the Mac OS Ken empire. Theoretically, Day Six is published on Saturdays, but in practice it kind of shows up when it shows up.

When not forwarding the world domination of his podcast, Ken does occasionally Twitter. While Ken isn't the most prolific person on Twitter, his tweets are usually amusing, insightful, or just plain useful. Ken will engage with others on Twitter, usually in regard to an Apple related story, and sometimes includes things that didn't quite make it into his podcasts. And when there is the occasional extra available through the Mac OS Ken iPhone App, you can be sure to find directions on how to find it at @MacOSKen. And on top of that, Ken, You rock!

I hope everyone has had a good iPhone week. For those of you who aren't fond on the iPhone, or just prefer anything that doesn't run on AT&T, relax, it's almost over. For the rest, I hope your pre-orders were delivered in time, and that nothing was lost in upgrading to iOS 4. All of you need to vote in the two June polls over on the right. Go ahead. Vote now. I'll wait. No, really, it's OK. I want the feedback.

You voted? Good. Next week is a writing week for me as I try to get a little ahead of the game for the summer. There will be another FollowFriday post on July 2nd, and then a new review on the 5th! Until then have a good week!

Google Voice Update

Back in the original Google Voice review, I had mentioned that Google Voice was one of those Google projects that is eternally in Beta. Well, it seems that Google disagreed with me on that point. On Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010, Google announced on the Google Voice Blog, that Google Voice was coming out of Beta and is now available for new subscribers in the United States without the need for an invite!

Yup, those pesky and elusive Google Voice invites are now a thing of the past.  If you've been waiting for one, you need wait no more, just go and sign up for your new Google Voice account. It will give you something to do while syncing your new iPhone with your computer.  Or updating your old one to iOS 4.  Or just trying to avoid another iPhone story...

Red Laser

Ever since the iPhone came out, users have wanted something that will let them scan barcodes with their phones and find out if the same item is being offered elsewhere at a better price. Red Laser does just that, with a simple and intuitive interface. Red Laser was created by Occipital, LLC. and normally costs $1.99, but at the time of this writing is on sale in the iTunes Store for $0.99. The current version of the app is 2.7.0, and you can find out more about it at http://redlaser.com/.

Red Laser is one of the few iOS apps that only works on the iPhone. The need for the camera pretty much edges out the iPad and the iPod Touch. Naturally, we'l have to see how this effects things if future versions of those products include cameras that Red Laser could use.

When you first bring up Red Laser, you are presented with a list of scanned items. Naturally, the first time you use it, it will be a blank list. I've included a few items as examples. The interface is fairly simple and straightforward. You can touch the stars next to an item to mark them as favorites. Favorites are protected items, and it is a good idea to mark things that you regularly shop for as favorites so your can check prices before heading out shopping. Note that you can only mark and unmark favorites from this screen.

Tap the edit button in the upper right corner and the list updates to include red deletion indicators. These only appear to the left of items that are not favorites. Tap one of these icons and a "Delete" button appears on the list item. Tap that and it is gone.

Also on the edit screen is a "Clear" button in the top left corner. This one will delete all the items in the list that are not favorites. You get the usual verification warning at the bottom of the screen, but other than that, there is no going back from this one, so be sure when you use it.

Tapping on any of the items in your list will re-run the search for that item giving you updated information about where you can find it. But we'll cover that in a minute.

Skipping down to the bottom left of the scanned items list, we find what looks like a regular forward button. This button actually has a dual role. It will forward your list of scanned items as an e-mail, letting you send it to yourself, or to someone else. This is one way to create that pre-birthday or pre-christmas wish list for your family. But you can also access Red Laser's help page from this pop up. This is a little unusual placement for a help page. Then again, it is a very simple help page. I suspect most users will never really look for it.

The help screen is the only place that notes that there are additional settings for Red Laser under the iPhone's Settings screen. And there is a link to an instructional video for those who want to find better ways to use Red Laser. Yet even taking that into consideration, I still think that most users won't need the help. The most basic instruction is to just tap the button with the lightning bolt on it. And that is what we're going to next.

Click Done to return to the Scanned Items screen and tap that bottom center button, and you turn control of the iPhone's camera over to Red Laser. I have to apologize for some of the blurriness in the following screen shots. It is a little difficult to take a decent screen shot of the scanner while holding the phone so that it doesn't successfully scan the barcode and move on to the next screen.

Red Laser puts a template over the screen to help you position the product and the phone properly. The notes at the top of the screen help you to pick out which of several potential sets of barcodes you will want to scan. This is useful when you are dealing with products that have multiple barcodes on them. Note the Multiple indicator that is turned off in the bottom right of the screen. This isn't for dealing with multiple barcodes. This is to help you scan multiple products. With that flicked over to the on position, you can scan several products in a row and then go back to the scanned items listing to see the results. This is handy in many situations, but for now, we'll just focus on one product.

When you are first positioning the iPhone to scan a product, the alignment guide bars are white. As you bring the bar code into the correct alignment, Red Laser detects this, and changes the tip text to "Hold still for scan." as seen below.

Now, this looks like the right position for a scan, but there area actually two sets of bar codes in the range. Otherwise you can hold very still for quite a while without picking anything up.

This picture shows the almost correct position for scanning. It is actually a bit low on the bar code so that I could get the screen shot. When the phone is positioned correctly over the bar code it automatically scans the bar code and proceeds to search for matching entries. Red Laser was created specifically for the iPhone's fixed focus camera and uses a technology developed by Occipital to correct for viewing the bar code at the wrong focal distance. Occipital has actually developed an SDK for this technology allowing other developers to build their own apps with this barcode scanning tech. Details on that can be found at http://www.redlaser.com/SDK.aspx. The SDK is a free download, but there are additional costs for licensing and creating a developer account.

On the results screen, Red Laser displays the hits from searches for the scanned bar code against Google's database and TheFind's database. Both sites have data for online vendors, but TheFind also has data on pricing from a number of brick and mortar stores. Red Laser uses your location information to limit this to the stores closes to you and presents these in a separate local listing. The listing are grouped by source and then sorted by price. And for some items, there are special listings.

When you scan a food item, Red Laser will also pull up Nutritional facts from DailyBurn, if they are available, and any allergen information available from FoodEssentials. These results show up above the price listings and make a very handy, and portable, reference for finding foods that fit your diet, and avoiding those that will set off your food allergies.

When scanning books, Red Laser also performs a search of local libraries and returns a listing of those that have the book listed as part of their catalogs. Currently this capability is only available in the United States.

Of course, no matter how good Occipital's scanning technology is, there is always the possibility of running into something it just cannot scan. This could be because the bar code is dirty or damaged, or even obscured. In any of these cases, as long as you can read the number codes at the bottom of the bar codes, Red Laser can still help out. The button on the bottom Right of the scanned items screen will bring up a keypad that will allow you to enter the codes manually. When you've entered the right number of digits for a valid code, a green check mark will appear at the right of the display and the "Done" button will enable itself.

Now, as nifty as Red Laser may be for the consumer, there are some stores that just don't like the idea of someone coming into their store, scanning their inventory, and finding out that someone elsewhere is undercutting their prices. And some of them will still throw you out of the store even if you assure them that they really do have the best prices in the area. Here at the Nifty Tech Blog we believe in supporting our local merchants, but we also believe in a consumer's right to take their business elsewhere. It is up to each person to find their own balance between the two.

However, Red Laser does include a few things to make it easier to avoid a confrontation. Once you've installed Red Laser on your iPhone, you'll notice application settings for Red Laser in your iPhone's Settings application.  We mentioned these earlier. Among these is an option to make the barcode scanner silent.  Normally, when Red Laser successfully scans an item, it makes a beep similar to that of a cash register scanning an item. Turning on silent mode eliminates that beep and will make it easier to do discreet scanning in your local store if you choose to.  There is also a control for the types of barcodes that Red Laser will scan.

Under the product search area are tools to allow the user to select the local currency, disable the automatic search, or to deactivate the local search if you happen to be a privacy minded individual who doesn't want your locality information to be used.

The one odd thing I have noticed about this panel is that my version information says I'm using 2.2.0, while I clearly have access to functions available in 2.7.0. I am unsure if this is an error in updating the Red Laser software as successive revisions have come out, or an indication that the settings portion of the program hasn't changed since 2.2.0.  You may see different results if you download it today.

Red Laser is elegant in its simplicity, and still delivers powerful tools to the consumer, allowing iPhone users to watch out for their wallets, health, and their waistlines when shopping in the real world.  While it may not be a favorite in every store, it is a favorite here.

#FollowFriday - @Odin1Eye: blogger, family man, viking, and podiobook reviewer.

@Odin1Eye is the internet name of a blogger from Texas who chooses to keep his real name off the net as much as possible. Since @Odin1Eye is a friend of The Nifty Tech Blog and is a contributing volunteer, we'll respect his wishes. That and he asked me to. He is a family man, a self-proclaimed Mac Geek, a martial artist, a teacher educator (he teaches teachers how to teach), and a video buff.

@Odin1Eye is also the man behind the blog View from Valhalla. He began blogging on March 23rd, of 2009 with a plea to the (publishing) gods to explain why books like Twilight see print, but works like @PhilippaJane's Weather Child are rejected for "lack of a market". I won't go into the whole thing, but you can read it here if you're interested. View from Valhalla started out as a personal blog, and in some ways it still comes across as one. @Odin1Eye speaks as himself and tends to be rather frank. But in November of 2009, he started a new project that has taken over his blog and established his name in the social media community. For on November 15th, 2009, he started his Podcast Review series. Since then, he has published 33 podcast reviews. In general, @Odin1Eye reviews podcast fiction that has completed and is available in its entirety, although he reserves the right to break his own rules. These reviews are an excellent resource for lovers of fiction, podcasting, podcast novels, and audio books. I recommend checking them out.

@Odin1Eye also partnered with fellow viking @Rasplundjr of Random Pimpage and they offered up a two viking review to the highest bidder during The Boom Effect auction. This "Pimp from Valhalla" style review was to feature the two (drunken) vikings discussing the winner's latest project in the coarse, disparaging, yet kind-hearted manner that only vikings can muster. For reasons that still escape me, I bid on this lot and ended up being the winner. Yes, that's right. I paid good money to a five-year-old girl to have two inebriated vikings roast my blog over the coals. I plead auction fever. Unfortunately, life events prevented the double-viking threat from doing the review, so they each did individual reviews as a good faith effort until they can make good on the original contract. Or until the Girl Scout Mafia catches up to them for their unpaid cookie bills. Whichever comes first. You can see their efforts here and here. And yes, this does mean that at some point they're going to come along and roast me again.

On Twitter stream, @Odin1Eye is a person that I tend to think of as the "cheerleader" of the network. He is always very supportive of everyone's projects, new and old. And I guess you can tell from the paragraphs above that there is a fair amount of good-natured kidding around. The end result is frequently insightful, rambling conversation that frequently leaves me in stitches. If you've followed any of the multitude of links in the above paragraphs, you should probably plan on following @Odin1Eye.

That is it for today. Go, have a good weekend, and come back here on Monday for a new review.  Red Laser will be up then and I'll tell you all I can about it while you're hammering Apple's servers trying to download iOS 4 along with a few million other people. And there may just be another editorial or two dropping next week. Be sure to vote in the two polls going for the month of June. See you next week!

In which our author eats crow...

I was wrong.

In a BIG way. A little right, too, but mostly wrong.

In yesterday's editorial, and in the comments, I took the stance that despite the high demand for the new iPhone 4 it was unlikely that the pre-order inventory would be exhausted on the first day.

BOY, was I wrong.

Demand for the new iPhone was so strong that, despite the problems that plagued Apple and AT&T's systems from the high volume of orders, Apple and AT&T ran through their inventory of pre-order phones in less than a day. AT&T ran through their allotment very early in the day. Other resellers such as Best Buy and Radio Shack (now just "The Shack") exhausted their allotment within hours after they started taking pre-orders. And last night on the US Apple Store, the availability for the iPhone 4 quietly ticked over from "Delivered on June 24th" to "Ships on July 2nd".

Orion commented on yesterday's iPhone 4 Preorder Madness editorial that, the the new phones "are also not in infinite supply" as a rationale for the massive drive by customers to put in their pre-orders. While this is correct, we should also remember that the window for acquiring an iPhone 4 is roughly 11 months long, and the penalty for waiting to long to get one is the opportunity to order an iPhone 5. So, I was right in that there really isn't a great need to scramble to get your hands on a new iPhone. They'll be around for a while, and most of us already have perfectly serviceable phones to use in the meantime. I mean, we got this far, didn't we?

But I clearly didn't understand how strongly the desire for the new phone ran. For those, like myself, who didn't get a pre-order in, we now have the choice of standing in line at the Apple Store on June 24th in the hopes of being early enough in line to get one of the units set aside for walk-in customers on the release date, or place your order now for the July 2nd ship date and expect to see your new phone the following week, or just wait until the rush dies down and the phones are plentiful and easy to find.

I have to wonder what feature has made the iPhone 4 so irresistible to so many. Is this just the mass of iPhone and iPhone 3G users whose commitments have expired looking to get their hands on a phone that can take full advantage of iOS 4? Or new users who have been waiting for multi-tasking before buying in? Is it Facetime that has tipped the scales for users new and old who now have to have the ability to place video calls? The new Retina Display? The LED Flash? The ability to take and edit video right on your phone? Or the combination of all of these?

I guess June is going to have a second poll so I can find out.

I hope everyone got their pre-orders in.  And next week, when you get your hands on the new phone, let me know what you think.

iPhone 4 Preorder Madness

It seems that some folks have spent a very sleepless and angry night.

This morning the iPhone 4 went on pre-order at the Apple store. And it would appear that the demand for Apple's new phone has far outstripped their expectations.  Or at least their servers ability to handle the traffic.

Early bird iPhone fans, who couldn't bear to wait any longer to pre-order their new phones, have reported great anguish and frustration as the Apple store has repeatedly failed to load, or has aborted their transactions in the middle of processing. Timeouts and long wait times have characterized this experience for most who attempted to put in their pre-orders in the first few hours of the new phone's availability. One iPhone hopeful who was tweeting her frustration after trying repeatedly to place her order for hours reported that she had actually got to the "Place Order" button, and then lost her session when she clicked it.

Why does this sort of thing happen time and again when Apple rolls out a new product? Is Apple underestimating the demand? Are they underestimating the server resources required to process the influx of orders?

Perhaps the problem doesn't lie with Apple. In processing the pre-orders, at least in the United States, the Apple Store has to gain approval from their phone partner(s) before completing the transaction. It may be that Apple's servers have been able to handle the load, but they have been slowed down by overwhelmed servers on the end of AT&T and other partners. Each of these pending transactions takes up additional system resources and leads quickly to Apple's servers being overwhelmed.

Or perhaps we should lay the blame with the consumer? With that odd desire to be the first to acquire a new gadget or device. Pre-orders on the 15th will arrive at the same time as pre-orders on the 16th, 17th, or even the 21st. These devices aren't being built to order. They've already been shipped to Apple warehouses about the country. But there is still that desire for immediate gratification. Another twitterer showing his frustration with the Apple store this morning, upon my asking him why he didn't wait for a later time, responded, "But I want it NOOOOWWWWW!" Thus technology doth make five-year-olds of us all.

Of course, Apple could have throttled down the server resources for the first few hours in order to inflate the appearance of demand for the new phone. It would be a horribly cynical thing to do, creating bad public relations in order to capitalize off the publicity, but it would also satisfy Apple stockholders that the company was sound and that their products are in high demand. But I don't think Apple would do such a thing. Not because I believe that Apple has high ideals that would prevent them using the same sort of tactics that are regularly used by toy companies to generate Christmas demand. No, I doubt that Apple would employ such tactics because they are so committed to providing a good user experience, I don't think they would willingly sabotage their own site and create a bad user experience, no matter how lucrative it might be.

In the end, we have only ourselves to blame.  After all, you can still pre-order tomorrow.

iPhone 4, Something new, or more of the same?

With great fanfare, and very little surprise, Apple announced this year's version of the iPhone last week. And probably the most surprising thing about it is that we've seen it before. Thanks to Gizmodo and their somewhat questionable approach to journalistic ethics and property laws.

The new iPhone isn't quite what I expected from Apple. I had originally dismissed the photos from Gizmodo because they showed a device that seemed distinctly un-Apple-like in design. The iPhone 3G and 3Gs showed Apple going to a smoother, more flowing design, curved to fit the hand comfortably. It was quite a change to see Apple go to a boxy, minimalist industrial look instead. In retrospect, we probably should have expected something like this, given Apple's past with the sleek, sculpted Wallstreet and Pismo Powerbooks being replaced by the boxy Titanium Powerbooks and the only slightly more rounded Aluminum MacBook Pros. When changing medium, Apple does tend to go back to basics with their design and then evolve.

Jobs compares the new iPhone design to being similar to an old Leica camera, which seems somewhat odd for the CEO of a modern tech company.  Actually, if they'd finished out the iPhone 4 in brass instead of stainless steel, you could make a case of calling it a more steampunk inspired design. Just brass and glass. Of course, if you go for Apple's "bumper" accessory "case" (how can it be a case if it only covers the sides?) that will help round off the edges. But the flat, squared-off design of the iPhone 4 seems very reminiscent of the first generation iPod nano. I thought Apple had moved past that phase.

Apple continues its odd obsession with making thin devices. While I can see the advantage in making lighter, more portable devices, we are at a stage where there is little to be gained by thinness. While technology has managed to create functioning displays as thin and flexible as an old slide transparency, such products are still a ways from the market. Of course, if someone manages to make a smartphone with a flat plastic display, a battery on one end and a take up reel on the other, I'm pretty sure it will sell. And right now, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple made it.  But that is next year (at least)... Still, this seems more like an attempt at thinness for the sake of thinness. I don't see any real utility being added by squeezing more space out of the phone. In fact, I'd say that a lot of people would have been very happy if Apple had kept the previous volume of the iPhone and just filled the space vacated with more battery. The battery is the biggest component in the new phone, and more battery time is hard to perceive as a bad thing.

Perhaps this is an extension of the uni-body trend from the Macbook. The iPhone isn't a uni-body, but the two stainless steel antennas that form the sides of the phone are the major structural components of the phone. Does this make it a duo-body design? There is a lot of logic behind minimizing the number of structural joins in a product. This simplifies the assembly process, reduces costs, and makes repairs easier. When done correctly, the end result is a product that is more solid and reliable.

Another of Jobs' featured changes is the new Retina display on the iPhone. How soon will this come to the iPad, I have to wonder. It really ups the ante for the artwork in apps. One has to wonder how IOS 4 apps for the iPhone will look on the iPads currently in the market. This kind of high-density display is great for a small device like a phone, but I expect that soon people will want to see Retina displays on all kinds of devices. I am sure that if this year's new iPod Touch (expected in September) doesn't have a Retina display, many consumers will be screaming bloody murder (OK, more like unfair business practices, but still.). And I wouldn't be surprised seeing these kinds of displays on other iPods. They are ideal for small screens.

But I would not be surprised if pundits start talking about a Retina Display iPad before Christmas rolls around. Or an iMac with a Retina Display. Or 25 to 30 inch Retina Displays for your computer. While these things may come in the next five to ten years, I don't see them coming in the next 1 - 2 years.  Screens of this density increase exponentially in cost as they get bigger. And if you think your video card is working hard to keep up now, just imagine increasing the number of pixels in the same area by a factor of four!

More good news: 802.11n WiFi is finally coming to the iPhone. For owners of the iPhone 4 this will mean an opportunity to get all of your Apple devices off of b and g networks and into a unified n network structure for faster network throughput. The iPhone has been the last of the currently shipping Apple products that was still tied to the slower b/g WiFi frequencies. Of course, if you're still nursing along older devices, you'll still need dual network support, at least until you can afford to upgrade those other devices.

Judging by the demo, the new Gyro sensors will bring a whole new level of sensitivity to iPhone controls.  In the keynote, you can literally see the normal shaking of Job's hand reflected in the iPhone display during the Gyro portion of the demo. This should be great for games and other programs that require accurate sensing of the position of the phone. I suspect that once the developers get properly up to speed on the new hardware we will see a rash of revisions to games, and a bunch of new augmented reality type apps.

I am unsure of what to make of iMovie for iPhone. It seems an odd choice of Apple to move into facilitating mobile video on the phone. Video editing seems to be a space where space is important. the iPhone's small screen should be a liability to video processing. This may be somewhat mitigated by the limited functions supported by iMovie for iPhone. We won't be able to truly evaluate it until both products are released and into consumer hands. I hope Apple has come up with a really fantastic interface and has packed a ton of functionality into the app, but this one just looks like a stumble to me. It might be good for simple clip trimming, but I don't know that it will be worth the price of the app.

Jobs also announced that Apple will be renaming iPhone OS 4 to iOS 4. This seems somewhat logical seeing as it powers iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. I expect that we will be seeing some arguments over how to pronounce the new name. Let us hope that there are no holy wars between those who say "eye oh ess" and those who say "eeeos".

Finally unified mailbox and threading are making it to mail on the iPhone. About time. First we get used to these features on Mail on our Macs, then we have to unlearn them when working with Mail on our iPhones. Haven't we all moved to using our phones as our primary e-mail reading and managing tool? Once you start looking at your e-mail on your phone, it quickly becomes the dominant e-mail reading platform, simply so you can avoid having to read the same e-mail multiple times. Or we all move off of POP and onto IMAP for all of our mail servers. Threading makes it much easier to manage e-mail conversations, especially if the conversation is spread out over a long period of time. And for any of us with multiple e-mail accounts to manage, a unified mailbox is a godsend.

Facetime. This is a feature that people have been practically clamoring for ever since the iPhone first came out. But I wonder if even Apple realizes that this may just make the iPhone 4 the first cell phone for the deaf? I'm not sure if it really is the first cell phone that can be used by the deaf, but it does look like it is the first that you can sign on. Providing you can sign one-handed. Apple did include someone signing in the film on Facetime, but otherwise didn't make much about it.  I would have expected them to make a big thing about how it is more accessible for the deaf. Then again, they may have decided that it wasn't as much of a selling point.

For me the second biggest surprise of the event was the announcement that AT&T is going to make customers eligible to upgrade to the new iPhone 4 at the subsidized price 6 months early. Looks like AT&T really wants a big roll out this year. This seems odd as AT&T doesn't really make money on people upgrading expensive subsidized phones. Yes, they make money on the 2 year contracts, but unless the customer was otherwise planning on leaving AT&T, they would be making that money anyway. Now upgrades will make lots of money for Apple, so this may be part of AT&T supporting the contract.

Today marks the beginning of iPhone 4 pre-orders, and I have no doubt that Apple's servers will be very busy. But I'm somewhat surprised that Apple isn't taking the same kind of criticism for the iPhone 4 that they took for the iPad. Even with iOS 4 coming out on June 21st changing the look of things, the iPhone 4 isn't that different from its predecessors. It seems more evolutionary than revolutionary.  Yes, there are a lot of updates, but do they amount to a significant improvement? Well, we'll all be able to judge for ourselves come June 24th. Unless the demand is so high we have a hard time getting our hands on one.

Apple still has not managed to do a the worldwide rollout, but they do seem to be trying to get the iPhone out much faster than the iPad. The initial June roll out will supply iPhones to five countries, with successive roll outs over the next two months. If Apple can manage to pull of this ambitious schedule, and not continue to push releases back, it will be a remarkable comeback from the staggering iPad rollout. The iPhone is a more mature product, and Apple does have a better idea of how it will be received by the market, but that really doesn't come close to the series of delays that plagued the iPad rollout.

What little we've seen of Apple's new iPhone accessories makes them seem rather dubious. The "bumper" case seems overpriced, but it does appear to fit with Apple's "naked" iPhone and iPod model. It remains to be seen of Apple has designed this phone to still fit on their own docks while wearing the "bumper" case, or if the phone must be pulled out of the case in order to dock it. And it may be that the one truly revolutionary thing about the new iPhone may be the hardened glass that covers the front and back of the phone. If they have finally come up with a material that doesn't need a case in order to stand up to daily wear and tear without being covered with cracks and scratches, then that will be something exceptional in the industry.

Until the 24th, we'll just have to wait.  And speculate.

#FollowFriday - @Safety: Twitter's scam watchdog.

This week I am endorsing Twitter's own security watchdog. This is a little known Twitter feed that everyone on Twitter should follow in order to be aware of the latest scams and to learn the simple ways that you can protect yourself from identity theives, scam artists, and other lowlifes. I am speaking of the most appropriately named @Safety.

@Safety is one of those accounts that you follow, but don't see them tweet often. But when @Safety does tweet, you better listen.  The tweets from this account come straight from Twitter's headquarters and contain information and links to articles to help you be a smarter, savvier, and safer Twitter user. @Safety gives out hints on identifying scams, such as messages requiring you to download a "safety module", asking for confirmation that your account has not been used for spamming, or requiring personal information in order to fix or verify your account. Twitter won't contact you by tweet or DM to do any of these things.  Anyone claiming to be from Twitter and asking you to do something is either a criminal, or a compromised account.  @Safety will also provide links to the latest Twitter blog entries on status and phishing attempts, so you can be informed and keep your account, and your personal information, under your control.

No review scheduled for next week, but there may be a special item or two to drop into the feed. And naturally there will be another #FollowFriday post. There is a new poll up, so please take time to vote on it. And comment to let me know if you like the polls, or if you'd rather I put them away for now. As always, I'd love to hear your feedback. Let me know what would make the Blog more enjoyable for you. See you next time!

Poll time.

Last month's poll was about ways to process text, and the results were a little disappointing. The three respondents were equally tied between TextEdit, Pages, and Open Office Writer. It is hard to draw any kind of conclusions with such a small sampling, but if I had to hazard I guess, I'd say it is an indication that there isn't a lot of strong feeling in favor of any given text editor.  At least not among my current group of readers.

With yesterday's announcement of the iPhone 4 coming to stores in the US on June 24th, and IOS 4 being released on June 21st, we're going to be hearing an awful lot about them in the coming month. So for the remainder of June, I'd like to hear about what the iPhone is missing. This month's poll question: What single missing feature would make you want to get a new iPhone 4 right now?

I'm taking the July 4th weekend off, so this month you get a little extra time. Poll closes at Midnight, July 5th, Eastern Time.

And if these polls aren't interesting you, tell me what would.

Evernote

Are you one of those people who goes out to a restaurant and has great ideas over dinner? You scribble them down on a napkin, or the back of your receipt and then stuff it into your wallet or a coat pocket and never seem to get back to it? Or if you do get back to it, some important part of it always seems to be missing? If you can relate to this, Evernote was created for you.

Evernote for Android

Evernote is a free service provided by the Evernote Corporation. It allows you to capture, organize, and reference your notes, pictures, web clippings, and more.  And you can do it from their web interface at http://www.evernote.com, or by downloading a client.  Currently clients are available for Mac OS X, Windows, the iPhone, the iPad, Android, Blackberry, the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, and for Windows Mobile. Once you've created your free account, your notes will sync to each client as it connects to Evernote's servers.  The number of notes you can have is unlimited, but with a free account, you're limited to uploading 40MB of notes per month.  Evernote also offers a Premium account for $5 a month or $45 a year that increases your upload limit to 500MB a month and provides additional extra functions.

Getting started with Evernote is just a matter of creating a username and password and providing Evernote with a valid e-mail address. Evernote will send you a confirmation e-mail. Verify that you did create the account, then sign in with your new account, or download and install one or more clients.  You're ready to start capturing your notes.  Simple.

Evernote for Blackberry

There are a lot of ways to get something into Evernote.  The most obvious is to use one of the clients to create new text notes, or take a snapshot directly into Evernote from the client.  In my experience with my iPhone, taking photos directly to Evernote was always an iffy proposition.  I've lost pictures because the upload never completed, or a phone call came in during the upload, or because the client app just popped.  Much safer to take the picture to your phone's cameral roll, and then upload it from there to Evernote.  And on some devices you can also take voice notes as well.

The Windows and Mac clients also install an Evernote web clipping tool.  You can also download and install versions of the tool for various browsers on those machines where you don't want to have a full browser, but use often enough to want to be able to capture web clippings.  Once the tool is installed, just click on it to send an entire page to Evernote.  If you only want a portion of a web page, just select the area you want first.

Web clipping tool on a Mac browser

Evernote has a few other ways of allowing you to import information.  With each account you get an e-mail address that allows you to send or forward e-mail right into Evernote.  So when you get that hotel conformation letter you can forward it and have it in Evernote where you can find it quickly.  More on finding things later. If you start getting spam at that address filling up your Evernote, just go into settings on the web client and generate a new e-mail address for your Evernote account.  In addition to e-mail, you can drop Twitter messages into your evernote account.  Just follow @myen (My Evernote), and you will receive a direct message with a confirmation link.  Click on that link and sign into Evernote to associate your Twitter account with your Evernote account.  Then, if you tweet or retweet anything with @myen in it, that tweet will go right into your account.

Evernote will also import your Google Notebook items as notes.  To do this one you'll need to sign in to the web client and go into settings.  Click on the Import tab item, then click on Google Notebook. There is an instructional video, and detailed instructions to help you choose the import settings you want.  Presumably, Evernote will be expanding the number of services that you can import from in the near future.

Some products are even building in Evernote compatibility.  For example, the Cannon ImageFormula P-150 will scan documents and upload them directly to your Evernote account.  The Eye-Fi wireless SD card can send pictures directly from your digital camera to your Evernote account.  Mobile applications like Seesmic and Egretlist will also sync content to your Evernote account. You can find a list of similar products on Evernote's website.

Part of the Evernote package is syncing across all platforms, and access to all the various versions of the Evernote client.  Included with that is Evernote's Text Recognition feature.  Whenever you add an image, or a note containing images to Evernote, software scans the image looking for text.  It then indexes your note with the text that it found and the position of the text in the image. This allows you to find these images by searching for the text within them.  For example, I went on a picnic last year and tried some new wine. I took a picture of the wine bottle, so that I could remember to get more of it later.  Let's say I don't remember the wine, but do remember that a box of Club crackers was also in the picture.  I search on "club" and see what I find:

Evernote search on iPad

My search word is even highlighted in the picture.  Evernote doesn't keep an OCR copy of your image to search, and you can't get an OCR version of a photo out of Evernote.  Instead it keeps a list of possible text interpretations with different scores.  This lets you search for text in images without having to look at each image.  It isn't perfect, but it does give you a best guess.

Tags view on iPad

Evernote lets you organize your notes in two basic ways.  The first is that you can assign tags to your notes.  Tags can be anything you want, providing it is meaningful to you.  They let you pull similar data from across your list of notes.  The second method is to group related data items into notebooks. Notebooks pretty much work like folders, except you cannot nest them.  So, if you were a frequent traveller, you could create a notebook for each trip and add all the planning information for your trip into that notebook.  You could then tag your hotel confirmation as "Hotel", your rental car reservations as "Rental Car", your plane tickets as "Flights", and your schedule as "Itinerary".  Then when you need to find something, you can either look it up by the trip, or by the type of information it is.  Or you could create notebooks for "Hotel", "Rental Car", et al and tag the items by the date and destination of the trip.  Whatever makes sense to you.

One thing to be careful of when creating notebooks, is the kind of notebook.  Notebooks can be either synced or local, and once created the type cannot be changed.  You don't want to put data you need to take with you into a local notebook.

Mac client with synced and local notebooks

One of the nifty things that you can do with Evernote is to share your synced notebooks with others.  Either you can share the notebook with the world, or you can share it with specific individuals.  Evernote actually implements their website FAQ as a series of shared Evernote notes.  You can search it, or browse through the notes.  And you can link individual notes, or groups of notes from searches to your account so that you can pull up that help at need.  When you share a notebook with the world, it becomes available at a public url that begins with www.evernote.com/pub/ and your username. At the next level down, you get to set the name the world will see and add a description.  You can also determine the sort order of the items in the folder.

When sharing with individuals, you will need to provide the e-mail addresses of the individuals and determine if you wish to require them to log into Evernote in order to access the notebook.  You can also include an explanatory message to go along with the invite.  With a free account or when sharing to the world, you can only share files as read-only items, but with a Premium account you can choose to give your invitees privileges to edit the notebook and add or delete notes.

With the free account the kind of files you can place in a note are limited to text, images, audio, and PDF files.  And that is really enough for most people's needs.  But if you need more, you can try a Premium account, which will allow you to upload any file type.  It also allows you to search within PDF files, access note history, and maintain local notebooks on an iPhone or iPad.  I haven't tried the Premium account yet, so I can't vouch for these features.

Client for Windows

With the Premium account, the maximum size of an individual note is bumped up to 50 MB from 25, and the user gains the ability to turn off the advertisements that are displayed on the Evernote web site and in the client.  The ads aren't particularly offensive, but they do take up screen space.  Regular Evernote accounts are secured by the logon information, which is transmitted to the server using SSL, while the actual notes are transmitted in the clear.  With a Premium account, your entire session is encrypted with SSL instead of just the logon info.  If you're wanting to store just a few notes with sensitive information, you can encrypt just those notes using the windows client for Evernote.  Unfortunately these encryption tools haven't been built into the other clients yet.  And remember that encryption key, because you will have to type it in whenever you want to access any encrypted notes.

Evernote on Palm Pre

The big power of Evernote is the sync.  The fact that you can collect your notes anywhere you happen to be, right when the thought hits you, then organize them when you have time, and carry the finished product on your mobile device, or access it through the web.  Even if you're in an area with no network connection, you can add and edit notes and then sync the changes when you can connect again. The best part, however, is the fact that the guys at Evernote aren't sitting back on their laurels.  They're still working to improve and expand Evernote to provide new tools to capture, organize, and retrieve your notes.  It will be interesting to see what they add next.

#FollowFriday - @BooksAndBraun: Steampunk Adventurers!

My recommendation for this week is a very new feed. In fact, it was created this week. @BooksAndBraun is the online voice of Wellington Thornhill Books, Esq. and Eliza D. Braun, two characters from the upcoming series, The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences co-authored by Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine.

So why follow fictional characters? Because these characters are made of WIN. Books is an Archivist for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, and Braun is a somewhat over-enthusiastic Agent who has been partnered with Books in the hopes that some time in the Archives will reign her in a bit. The Archives will never be the same.

The feed gives you the opportunity to interact with the characters, pick up a few new steampunk resources, and get the latest news on the 2011 release of the first Books & Braun book. Also in the works is a podcast of related Books & Braun short stories. The series, because there will be more books, looks to be one hell of a romp through the Victorian Empire. Even if you are not into Steampunk or the Victorian period, the posts, and the stories are full of wit and humor.

Disclaimer time: Tee Morris is an old friend of mine, as well as being a Twitter, Macintosh, and technology advocate. Philippa Balantine is a new friend that I've gotten to know through Tee. Both are talented writers and podcasters. You may think I'm just trying to help out my friends, but I believe that their work stands for itself.  Check it out, and I'm betting that you'll agree.

On Monday, come back for a look at Evernote in the next review.  And keep an eye on the blog for a special treat: an audio discussion with Bird House Rules coming up in the next week or so. While you're waiting, why not send me some feedback?  Tell me what you do or don't like about the blog, or what you'd like to see more of.  We may not have Pirate Zombie Ninja Robots, but we look forward to seeing your recommendations.  Can't think of anything to say? Then tell your friends about the Nifty Tech Blog and tell us about that!