What’s the most common phrase heard around the Gadgetell newsroom? Is it “I love Apple?”, “that’s cool!” or “sweet!”? Answer: none of them, it’s “they are on crack”. This week we take a look back at the things that made us chuckle in the tech world. This week, it seems there was more folks on dope than not. Lets get to this weeks accused:
- Skype 10-way
- Facebook plays with subscriptions
- Our Shawn Ingram promises to change to Palm’s webOS
- Apple decides buttons aren’t evil?
Skype plans for your 10-way
I love Skype as much as the next techie, but 10 way calling? Oy. Getting just one of my friends in front of the computer with me at the same time is sheer serendipity. But 10? Is this mandatory?
Our Editor Robert Nelson has the scoop: “A new posting over at the Skype Blog has formally introduced the latest in terms of Skype for Windows—Skype 5.0, which is still in beta (currently beta 2) but will allow for group video calling with up to 10 people.”
Just leaked from the DEA investigation over at Skype HQ:
Marketing “Well how many users can we do at once?”
Engineering “how many do you want?”
Marketing “Well, the anniversary of that crazy night in Fiji is coming upon us, can you do 10?”
Engineering “Ewww”
What’s better is currently, all ten of your friends need to running the same Beta. Awesome. You’ve got a better chance of herding cats – I can’t get my machines to run the same version of anything. Potential for business customers? Sure. For the rest of us? Nope.
Facebook try’s subscribing to users
Our Turun Kunwar as the story, “Facebook is working on a new “stalker button” that will allow you to see all of the updates of a given user. It basically works when you subscribe to a friend which will in turn provide you with all of the juicy goodness in the form of their updates. Think of this as DVR for Facebook!”
Um, you mean in its current state, Facebook is for something else?
Gadgetell writer promises to switch mobile phones
What our writers won’t do for you, our valued readers. Just this week, writer Shawn Ingram promised to jump ship on his current phone and pick up a webOS phone. “Please, Palm make a WebOS 2.0 phone with specs at least on par with, or better than the iPhone 4. I’d do everything I can to switch to such a phone, I promise.”
Promise? While he held up short of a pinky-promise, I think we can take Shawn at his word. Shawn clearly wants only adequate hardware to run the coveted webOS on. Can HP deliver on that?
I can tell you that Shawns problem with the hardware is not cosmetic. You see, Shawn wears those shoes with the toes in them, the Vibram Five Fingers so you know, fashion is not the issue. So what is lacking in the current Palm Pre Plus offerings? (sorry Shawn. Though, to my credit, I’ve held off seven months to find a way to work that into a post.)
You can bet I’ll be here to hold Shawns feet to the fire on this promise, only we’ll make sure the Five Fingers don’t melt.
Apple adds buttons it thought were silly last time.
The Shuffle 2.0 was cool: a clip, a button and music. The Shuffle 4.0 is cool: a clip, a button, and music. So who the heck designed 4.0?
Apple just emailed me an answer to that question, “you are looking at the line wrong. If you look at it with in a non-linear time fashion, you can see that 4.0 logically follows 1.0 in design.” Silly me, I was looking at it wrong; because it looks like Apple realized they messed up something good and then went back to it. Cool.
Our Shawn Ingram again writes, “the new Shuffle looks less like the last version, and more like the second generation, but focused on just the buttons. It has the same features as the previous version, including Voice Over, and playlist support. Apple also added Genius Mixes to the new Shuffle, making it easier to find similar songs.”
Does that mean the internal antenna of iPhone 4 will magically go back into the case for iPhone 5? You can bet I’ll be looking at the line wrong then, too.
I would try to switch to a competent WebOS phone, or at least get it as a second phone. I've always loved the aesthetic of WebOS, but the phone hardware was always lacking compared to other phones. I'd love to use it beside an iPhone and use Google Voice to just have one number.
As for the FiveFingers, when it comes to footwear I value comfort over style. The barefoot walking of the FiveFingers helped my back a lot to the point where I was actually not dying of pain by the end of CES.
Shawn, I concur on the hardware. Do you think HP can find a way to get the hardware out of the way of webOS?
Valuing performance over fashion is a good thing, I think. Sometimes.
I'm not sure if HP can get the hardware out of the way. From what I've seen from HP's hardware is they can certainly know how to riff on Apple design when they want to (see the ENVY laptops), which wouldn't be a terrible fit for WebOS.