This strikes me as really silly.

Yes, it’s a problem that AT&T is axing the unlimited data plan that was highly touted at the relatively recent iPad launch. Even if 2GB is enough for most people, this really feels like a bait and switch. Their “solution” was that anyone who currently has the unlimited plan activated can keep it, as long as it’s active before June 7. The problem is that it’s hard to get an iPad in that amount of time: their sold out quite widely and even Apple’s online store is backordered. Is selling data plans before people buy their iPad a solution? Technically yes, but it’s not much of one, especially since the whole point of the iPad plan was that you can turn it on and off as you like.

What would make a lot more sense? How about extending the unlimited option for the iPad for the rest of 2010, instead of introducing this switch with only 1 week’s notice.

Does AT&T have anyone actually thinking about PR?

Now Adobe’s launching an ad campaign in the name of “openness” and “fairness” designed to…do what exactly? Pressure Apple into allowing Flash on their iDevices (not going to happen) or their Flash-to-iPhone conversion tools?

This is a waste of their time and money, or at least of our time. There are enough terrible apps in the App Store without the need to make it easier to convert terrible Flash or Air apps into iPhone apps. Look at Air on the Mac…terrible, nonstandard-looking apps.

Yes, Flash is used on a lot of websites, but I don’t enjoy hearing my computer’s fan spin up just so some company can display a flashy (cough) animation (that’s why I use the excellent Click2Flash plugin in Safari). Yes, there are some things you can do with Flash that you can’t do with HTML5…but most of what Flash is currently used for can be done. Video works well, though Firefox is still being a pain (the battle is over, FF…Ogg lost) and many interactive Flashsites could easily be redone without Flash.

A simple request for Adobe: instead of wasting your time trying to trumpet Flash (which, despite many web video demos, STILL isn’t available for Android), how about making a decent updater and installer for my computer that doesn’t make me quit Safari every time I want to do an update (that has nothing to do with web browsing)? And stop acting like my decision not to install Adobe’s browser plugin is some sort of technical problem. And how about actually shipping Lightroom 3?

Adobe made a lot of great products, and I’ve been a huge fan of Photoshop. Despite loyally upgrading each Creative Suite they crank out, I’m not sure I’ve really seen a huge value in each upgrade since CS2. I haven’t yet made the plunge to CS5 – the installer annoyances have made me wonder whether I could get by with tools like Pixelmator. So far the answer has been no, but I would never have started looking had Adobe made the experience less painful (don’t get me started about the tabs in Photoshop).

I’m done ranting. For now.

“So you don’t do email?”

“No. I’ve got people to do it for me.”

via Sir Clive Sinclair: “I dont use a computer at all” | Technology | The Observer.

The social networking scene is all a twitter about Google Buzz. It’s introduction has been a class #fail…it was forced on users with much automation turned on – automatic following, automatic public exposure of followers list, annoying buzz messages appearing in your gmail inbox…

There’s a few things I really like about Buzz. Unlike Facebook, which aims to be a one stop shopping for your status updates, messages, photos, etc., Buzz seems to integrate better with other services, including non-Google ones. I particularly like the Google Reader integration, which makes it easy to share links with followers.

Despite steps to correct privacy faux pas, Google’s Buzz introduction is still somewhat of a mess. It’s hard to find settings (why isn’t there a Buzz settings link when you have it loaded…or at least a Buzz tab in Gmail settings). The Google Profile is hard to find (click on the More link at the top of the page…do you see Profile listed?) and generally a visual disaster.

In my small circle of Buzzers, the level of activity has dropped to a trickle.

I still think that Buzz has a place in this world, but Google needs to really improve the interface to access their various modules…true integration could make this a much more powerful platform.

Apple’s scheduled to make some announcements later this month (most rumors have zeroed in on the 27th), and there is much excitement around the potential release of a new tablet platform (the “iSlate”). However, there’s also expected to be an announcement of a new version of the iPhone OS (4.0). Apple’s facing increasing pressure from Google and their Android platform and need to step up their game to stay ahead. As usual, no one really knows what they have planned, but there are some clues. I think Apple is going to try to cut in to Google’s game in a big way. Here’s the evidence:

Anyone who has used Google Maps knows that it’s not perfect and can sometimes be frustratingly wrong, particularly when searching for business. Apple purchased a map company called Placebase back in July. Expect to see a new version of the maps application NOT driven by Google maps. Location-based advertising is a huge market, and Apple is not going let themselves become a feeder for Google’s business.

Apple also recently purchased Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company – I’m sure also not a coincidence. Apple currently offers developers two options for app development: sell the app for a price via the app store, and Apple will give you 70% of the profit, or sell it for free and neither the developer nor Apple makes any money. Here’s a new potential option: include some code in your app and Apple will take care of an ad-based model, sell your app for free in the app store, and you split the profits with Apple.

This model could also work (and, indeed, may work better) for the tablet, where screen real estate will be more plentiful.

What about search, Google’s core service? What if Apple’s tablet offered a search restricted to the most useful sources: news outlets and magazines that also happened to deliver their material via Apple’s new platform? That would be a strong incentive to participate.

As you may have heard, Google had a big press conference today to launch what has become known as “the Google phone” – a.k.a. the Nexus One.

During the McCain/Obama debates, there was some discussion of the difference between a tactic and a strategy. If Google has a strategy behind their latest tactic, I don’t get it.

It’s not clear what exactly the Nexus One is supposed to be. Google’s model with Android platform has been to develop the software and give it away for free to handset makers, who use it to make devices like the popular Motorola Droid. Business model? Not clear, but one idea is that it drives use of Google’s services, which can in turn drive profit through add revenue.

Well maybe that wasn’t enough, because now they’re selling the Nexus One directly to customers. But didn’t they say they weren’t going to make their own phone? Wouldn’t this anger other Android makers like Motorola?

Google is quick to say that the handset itself is made by HTC. So what exactly is the special role Google is taking here? They had a big press conference today focused on its launch…will they do they same for other companies each time a new Android handset is launched? That’s a rhetorical question – they haven’t and the won’t.

It makes the whole point of today’s press conference, and Google’s overall Android strategy, all the more confusing. My take: they are making this up as they go along, and there’s no adult supervision driving the ship here.

One of major weaknesses of Google Wave is that you need to specifically check the site to see if any of your waves have been updated. Google Chrome extensions are available, but don’t yet work on the Mac (besides, as we’ve already established, Google Chrome is slower than Safari on the Mac).

A better solution may be the Unofficial Google Wave Notifier for the Mac. It’s a free download and, in my 2 minutes of use, seems to work pretty well. It basically sticks a little Wave icon in your menu bar and displays the number of unread messages. If you click on the menu, there’s a link to go to Google Wave, as well as a list of the Waves with unread messages.

I still find Wave a bit clunky for most uses, but this is a step in the right direction.

There’s a lot of buzz about the new Google Chrome beta, which is now available on the Mac. I had an earlier version on my machine, but decided to upgrade to see if the beta was up to snuff.

Overall, I like the tab-oriented design, which requires some hackery to emulate in Safari. Lacking is 1Password support, which essentially rules it out as a primary browser for me. The main advantage, as cited by some of my Windows-using colleagues, is speed. While tests seem to show that Chrome is quite a bit faster than most other browsers in Windows, I can’t say the same of the Mac, at least my machine running the latest Safari on Snow Leopard.

Subjectively, I can’t see much of a speed difference between the two browsers – if anything, Safari seems a hair faster. This benchmark seems to substantiate these results. I’m getting a score of 527 in Safari, but only 489 in Chrome. In comparison, Firefox 3.5.5 gives me a pathetic 149.

Chrome also lacks one of my favorite features of Safari: speed dialing (which lets you load the bookmarks on your favorites bar by typing command-#, where # is any of the number keys). It’s always nice to have another browser in the mix, though – competition is good to keep things moving.

Google Fax.

Google Voice is more useful in theory than it is in practice for me. If I had multiple phones to manage, it would be great to have one number that could ring them all, and a centralized voicemail system to unify them. While voicemail transcription is marginally useful, I don’t really get all that many voicemails, and hearing the original audio via visual voicemail is already pretty convenient. The fact is that most of my calls go to my cell anyway, so routing them through Google Voice first is not of much utility.

On the other hand, faxing seems like it should have been replaced with something better (like, perhaps, email?!?), but is still widely used despite its relatively archaic technologic foundations. Most people don’t have a fax machine of their own at home (or, increasingly, even a phone line). This requires resorting to paying someone to use their fax machine or slumming off of the work fax machine, which is clearly a suboptimal solution (even if it’s generally accepted or at least overlooked).

What would be better is an online service which could route documents to those who still rely on fax machines. Even better, this service could provide a virtual phone number (much like Google Voice does) that could receive faxes and email them to you as PDFs. Services like eFax have the right idea, but are not free and, at least the last time I tried, require a special viewer app. This is the kind of problem that Google could solve. Well, Google, are you up for it?

It looks like the New York Times has a new interface option: Times Skimmer. It’s a nice layout. I’m withholding full judgement until I get a chance to give it a full trial, but so far I think I like it better than the standard layout. NYTimes is generally my preferred news source, but I’ve never found their newspaper-style layout to work that well on the web. This seems like a step in the right direction, at least at first blush.

One thought that struck me was that it looks like it’s designed for a tablet style interface. Maybe the rumored Apple tablet? It wouldn’t surprise me if the New York Times was one of the first partners.