Google Goggles (Android)

Earlier this week Google Goggles launched to great fanfare. Yet I’m not so sure it’s currently “a huge leap forward in the field of visual search.” Basically, you snap a pic with your Android (1.6 or greater) device and Google does it’s best to identify it. Whatever it may be. However, in testing yesterday, Goggles kind of sucks. Evernote clearly beats it in OCR. ShopSavvy and RedLaser clearly beat it in product identification and research. But this is Google. And they’ve got more brain power and computing power than most. So it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on. In the meantime, Goggles supposedly does a good job with artwork and landmarks… if you happen to be lost in or near a notable museum.

AT&T Mark the Spot (iPhone)

AT&T published a Mark the Suckage Spot app for iPhone owners to report their geographical pain points. As you can expect, they’re taking their lumps in the blogosphere by releasing this utility — which seems to emphasize their network shortcomings. However, I applaud the move and will gladly report the spots where I experience issues. Hoping someone might eventually do something with the data. Although, I’m not quite convinced they will. As I previously reported my lack of coverage the old fashioned way, in corresponding with an AT&T rep, and have yet to experience any relief. Also, ironically, where I have zero coverage during most weekdays I’m unable to actually submit anything.

Dragon Dictation (iPhone)

The makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking PC dictation software just pushed out a free (!) voice recognition app. Hit the record button, and Dragon transcribes your mumblings in nearly real-time via their servers. Once complete, you can push the text to email, SMS, or the iPhone clipboard. Like most voice recognition products, you’ll want to limit background noise and it did have some trouble with non-dictionary words. Although Dragon was impressive in correctly recognizing Cirque du Soleil and TiVo when carefully enunciated. For the time being, I still prefer leaving others voicemail or leaving myself Google Voice messages when I need transcription services — fewer clicks and the speech-to-text conversions are nicely collated within my Inbox.

There’s nothing like the holiday season to get you in the gadget shopping mood. However, even if you’ve done all your homework on what to buy, sometimes it’s hard to avoid the impulse purchase, particularly when there are so many shiny toys in all the store windows. Earlier this year, gadget site Retrevo launched its Real Time Review feature to simplify the research process. Now, the company has added on a mobile component. See something you’re tempted to buy? Text or tweet it to Retrevo (texting is new; tweeting is not), and you’ll get a near-instant response with information on whether the product is a strong buy, a recommendation on a fair price to pay, and a range of prices for the product available online.

Testing the mobile feature out myself, I was shocked at how quickly I received a response to each query. Return messages are short, sweet, and to the point. Retrevo relies entirely on quantitative data for its reviews, which means you don’t get any nuanced product information (like reliability comparisons between netbooks and other laptops). However, you do get a quick snapshot on any given device. The price recommendations are particularly helpful. Should you pick up a product at the store to avoid shipping costs, or is there a better deal online? Retrevo can tell you.

There are three ways to try out the Retrevo mobile service:

1. Send a text message to 41411 with the word retrevoq followed by the make and model of the device you’re researching. Ex: retrevoq Apple iPod Touch
2. Tweet a message to @retrevoq. Ex: @retrevoq Apple iPod Touch
3. Send a direct message on Twitter. Ex: dm @retrevoq Apple iPod Touch

I’ve followed Retrevo for years and am amazed at how the company continues to grow. The quantitative analysis you get from Retrevo is a useful twist on information that other CE sites provide. I’d love to see a mashup of features from Retrevo and the Rojas/Block-backed gdgt site. And speaking of partnerships, a Retrevo exec does say there are some partner announcements on the way. In the meantime, the site seems to be doing quite well enough on its own. Retrevo is projecting six million uniques in December, which would double last year’s number.

As we recently read, Mari’s beloved Asus netbook gave up the ghost. As they are wont to do. After a short period of some basic troubleshooting, she went the practical and conservative, perhaps costly, route of having a technician recover her data. It’s inevitable. Hardware will fail. And we’ve talked backup here several times over the years, so I’d rather now focus on a few (PC) disaster recovery tips.

Assuming you (or your mom, spouse, brother) don’t have a recent disk image or file backup from the impacted system for whatever reason, the top priority is to recover personal data from the drive. If it’s operable. OSes and software can be reinstalled. While videos of your kid are probably irreplaceable.

As Mari’s hard disk was still functional and she had an external optical drive handy, I had suggested booting into some other OS as a means of mounting the original drive and copying her data onto a USB stick. My first thought was for Mari to bring her laptop up with the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD), which contains a variety of useful tools for these situations. However, we were both a bit discouraged when we learned it had to be built off a local Windows XP disc. (I keep a copy of UBCD in the closet for emergencies, along with a few other tools, and I don’t recall how I built or acquired it.) So my next suggestion was to download an Ubuntu .iso – not to install, but to run as a Live CD. I wasn’t certain if it would automatically mount NTFS file systems, but figured it was worth a shot given the zero cost and minimal investment of time to try. But, at this point, Mari was ready to move on to other projects and we never went down this path. I also know there are a few custom recovery/technician sort of Linux builds out there. Possibly including the (skinned?) Geek Squad OS that Best Buy ultimately used to dump her data.

If Mari didn’t live about 2.5 hours away, I would have offered her a variety of drive enclosures and docks to take the Asus hardware entirely out of the equation in recovering her data. My latest addition, the Thermaltake BlacX SATA dock, was acquired about a year ago to recover a family member’s docs from a harddrive containing a corrupt Windows OS install. The dock connects to a good computer via USB and supports both desktop (3.5″) and laptop (2.5″) drives. For $30 or less, it can’t be beat. Optionally, there are a variety of cables that provide the same functionality. (Either would also come in handy for DIY TiVo drive replacement/expansion.)

(more…)

I’m not quite sure what prompted Google’s Chrome OS briefing yesterday, as we could be up to a year away from retail delivery of their Linux-based cloudbooks. It’s also a bit puzzling that Google would simultaneously pursue two distinct mobile operating systems. (see Android) However, I was looking for a project at 4AM and fired up a very early developer build of Chromium in VMWare Fusion (video above). If you’d also like to poke around with the browser-centric OS, head on over to GDGT for the VMWare or VirtualBox image. And to learn more of what we know and don’t know about Chrome OS, head on over to Technologizer.

Microsoft fared badly trying to break into the cable TV world, but it’s had a great deal more success with IPTV. And now that its Mediaroom software has gained widespread global adoption, Microsoft is anxious to keep developers engaged with the platform and pumping out new TV apps. Last month the Redmond giant hosted its third annual Mediaroom Developers Conference. Tracy Swedlow, long famous in the interactive television industry, reports that three applications earned top honors in the event’s ritual app contest.

Coming in first was ES3’s Interactive Workout application for creating a personal workout routine with how-to videos. Second prize went to Pushbutton’s Time Capsules app, which provides a way to navigate content created at specific moments in time. And third-place honors went to Accedo Broadband’s ZapClub application, featuring social networking features for TV shows including live tweets, Wikipedia information, and the ability to rate and share shows.

In the US, Microsoft’s primary Mediaroom deployment comes through AT&T’s U-Verse service. While not as aggressively marketed as the other big stateside telco TV offering, U-Verse continues to plug along quite successfully, with projected revenue hitting $2 billion this year. The continued development of TV apps for U-Verse is what should help set AT&T’s service apart from its cable competitors in the near future. In particular, the IP foundation makes these apps theoretically portable. Want to access that Interactive Workout on both your TV and your iPhone? There’s an app for that… or there soon will be.

Disclosure: I work for Motorola, which works closely with both AT&T and Microsoft on IPTV technologies.

I’m definitely a fan of the digital book reading devices. If you read many books, you’ll want something that’s easy on the eyes – you know, like paper. And e-ink is really the way to accomplish — unlike LCD screens it doesn’t strain the eyes. But there are those times when it’s nice to “extend” your book to other devices. For example, My wife has used the Kindle iPhone app to continue reading a book she’s been reading on the stand-alone Kindle during times when she’s stuck waiting in line.

Amazon and Microsoft have announced a new Kindle app that will let you extend those Kindle books a little farther – onto a Windows PC.  Beyond adding yet another device you can access your Kindle eBooks on, this app adds a few additional features to note including multitouch capability and color.  Here’s the feature list mentioned on Amazon.com:

• Get the best reading experience available on your PC. No Kindle required
• Access your Kindle books even if you don’t have your Kindle with you
• Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
• Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle

This will allow the Kindle books to work on tablet PC’s sporting Windows 7 and multi-touch. Not for me, but I know a lot of you want a multipurpose computing device that also functions as a usable ebook reader. (Mac support is coming, too.) This is potentially as big or bigger news compared to this week’s Barnes & Noble Nook eReader. Make no mistake, the day of the eBook breakthrough into mainstream is extremely near.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

Inrix Traffic!

Inrix is the company that powers or supplements quite a few traffic related services, including the (discontinued) Dash Express during my tenure at Dash Navigation (acquired by RIM). And while Inrix typically licenses their data to others, the iPhone app is completely free – perfect for getting a quick read on the situation. As we did (above) while sitting in a backup Labor Day weekend, returning from Monterey to Silicon Valley. The majority of Inrix data is culled from municipal road sensors and vehicle fleets. However, they also claim to instantly (and anonymously) update their Smart Driver Network with your location, speed, and heading via the iPhone’s GPS when using the app. Although I’ve never kept Inrix Traffic! up for more than a minute or two to analyze current road conditions where I’m at or where I’m headed. Often from a parked car.

Aha Mobile

Speaking of Dash Navigation, my former colleague Robert Acker (also an XM alumnus) now heads up Aha Mobile. Unlike a typical driving gadget or service, Aha’s free app doesn’t rely on a moving map. Or many visuals at all for that matter. Instead, Aha assumes you know where you are most of the time and relies heavily on audio cues – computer generated speech of nearby traffic alerts (using Inrix traffic data) and recorded “shouts” from this new community of connected drivers. As seen in the pic above right, Aha can also identify very specific nearby points of interest (coffee, food, restrooms). Not shown is the new feature to automatically share your shouts on Facebook and Twitter… should you feel so compelled. But right now there’s not much going on given Aha’s few regular, active contributors. Which is why I need you to join me.

AT&T Navigator (aka Telenav)

AT&T’s Navigator (Telenav) is exactly what you’d expect from a traditional GPS application. However, AT&T Navigator is fundamentally different from the competing TomTom ($100), Navigon ($90), and recently updated CoPilot Live ($35) iPhone apps that install maps onto your device, and possibly require additional upgrade fees. Telenav is both an app and a service ($10/month)… which pulls map elements from their servers. Theoretically their maps should always be the most up to date, but continually pulling data from the cloud as one drives will take an additional toll on iPhone battery life. While I’ve seen many complain about AT&T/Telenav’s monthly fee, there’s no commitment required. Meaning, if you’ve got an upcoming business or work trip, activate service for just one month as needed.

On that same Labor Day Weekend getaway to the Bay Area, I compared our TomTom 140-S to evaluation service of AT&T Navigator… which was the clear winner and very helpful on our journey. The TomTom hardware includes a louder speaker and windshield mount, but in all other areas Telenav was superior. In fact, I didn’t realize how poor TomTom’s text to speech street name pronunciation was until I ran it side by side with Telenav. Telenav map accuracy and directions were solid as well, with real-time traffic (Inrix, again!). Plus, data entry was a snap whether typing destinations manually, choosing from on-board contacts, or cutting & pasting street addresses that we looked up in Mobile Safari.