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PlayBook native email, calendar and contacts finally get peeked, look ready for their close-up
We've been waiting very, very patiently, for RIM to make good on its promise to deliver a native email and calendaring experience to the PlayBook. So far, we've been sorely disappointed. Supposedly the essential productivity and contact management tools will be coming with the update to version 2.0 of the OS in February, but until now we've seen neither hide nor pixelated hair of the apps. At the BlackBerry Innovation Forum RIM finally took the wraps off and demoed the email, contacts and calendar suite for a presumably relieved audience of QNX fans. The photos snagged by BlackBerry Cool aren't the greatest, but you can see the experience has been carefully crafted for a tablet, and the smartphone apps have simply been blown up to fill seven diagonal inches. A particularly interesting feature is, as the number of appointments you have scheduled on a particular day increases, the date grows and becomes bolder to alert you to your hectic schedule (above). For a bunch more pics and few more details check out the source link.
Tidying up location contacts for Siri and Reminders
My personal address book has no shame. I have contacts for people I haven't spoken to in years, contacts for people who I met at tech conferences, contacts for schools, for local stores, for repairmen, and so forth. It's one big old happy jumbled mess. I'm cool with that. When I want Siri and Reminders to be able to trigger a location-based event, I just throw it into my address book where it joins the hundreds of other often sad and neglected entries. I believe this makes makes me a type "N" on Myers Brigg or something like that. Not everyone will be happy with this kind of unstructured approach and an overflowing address book, or this kind of lack of organization. If you want to be able to to set location reminders without messing up your address book, TUAW reader Will Herbert has a solution. On your Mac, launch the Address Book application and create two new groups. Call one Contacts and the other Locations. Drag all your normal contacts into the Contacts group and create a set of location-only contacts in the other. Add stores, offices, dry cleaners, supermarkets, and so forth. These are all places that you don't necessarily want in your day-to-day contacts list. Each of these is still available in the address book and therefore still available to Siri and Reminders. At the same time, they won't clutter up your standard contacts. Score one for the Felixes of the world. The rest of us Oscars will trudge on as we were.
Apple's Find My Friends app now available
In advance of iOS 5, Apple has released Find My Friends, a location sharing app similar to Glympse. As the name implies, Find My Friends will let you locate your friends on a map. It'll also let you share your location so your friends can find you. For those concerned about privacy, the location sharing feature can be turned on permanently or only temporarily which is great for when you want your friends to meet you while you're eating dinner at a local restaurant, but not when you go home. It's also conveniently integrated with the built-in contact and map applications so you can find your friends and generate a route to meet up with them. You can install Find My Friends by visiting iCloud.com on an iPhone running iOS 5. You can also download it from the App Store. [Via Macstories]
Google Takeout comes to Voice, get your SMS and voicemail to go (video)
Those militant leftists at the Data Liberation Front are at it again, bringing their tool for fomenting revolution, Google Takeout, to Google Voice. With the information emancipating service, users will be able to download their call history, voicemail and text messages, recorded calls, and even greetings. All audio is delivered in MP3 format, while SMS is spit out as an HTML file. Check out the video below for a brief, if not entirely informative, announcement from the guerrilla data warriors.
PAX 2011: On the (re)starting line with APB: Reloaded
There's nothing like a car crash to slow down traffic as everyone rubbernecks at someone else's misfortune. Likewise, gamers and media alike were fascinated with the premature demise of last year's All Points Bulletin, craning their heads to see how extensive the damage was. But out of the wreck a new and improved version of the game was born, and now the crowds are equally taking notice of this resurrection. Not every canceled MMO gets a second chance at life, after all. This is why we were glad to sit down with GamersFirst's Jon-Enee Merriex at PAX to discuss how APB's reloading is going, what the devs have planned between now and launch, and what other projects they're tackling. Put the pedal to the metal and hit that jump -- this interview can't drive 55!
Video App Demo: WhitePages
If you're over a certain age and live in the USA you may remember the days when giant books filled with addresses and phone numbers were thrown at your house each year by Ma Bell. Unlike countries elsewhere, such as France, where computers took over the task of finding phone numbers before cell phones were popular, the White Pages (and their paid cousin, the Yellow Pages) were a fixture of American life for many years. Of course, now we have smartphones. But if someone isn't in your address book on your iPhone, you can use the WhitePages app to find their info. The WhitePages app does more than reverse lookup, but don't take my word for it. Check out the demo video below to see it in action. if(typeof AOLVP_cfg==='undefined')AOLVP_cfg=[];AOLVP_cfg.push({id:'AOLVP_1034513390001','codever':0.1, 'autoload':false, 'autoplay':false, 'playerid':'61371448001', 'videoid':'1034513390001', 'width':480, 'height':270, 'stillurl':'http://pdl.stream.aol.com/pdlext/aol/brightcove/studionow/p/96f369cb1e0a9/r/9f97f0a0ab0cd/al/193082/poster-10.jpg', 'playertype':'inline','videotitle':'TUAW - App Demo - WhitePages','videolink':'#'});
Google Takeout promises radical left wing-themed data extraction for Circles, more (video)
A team of khaki-clad Google engineers, calling itself the Data Liberation Front, has taken up the cause of freeing your data from the restrictive confines of El Goog's servers. Google Takeout, as the program has been billed, rips your various stashes of data from Buzz, Circles, Picasa, Contacts, and your Google Profile, and quickly bundles them in a zip file for download. The resulting booty is yours to do with as you choose. Takeout was announced the same day Google's latest social initiative sprung to life, offering an alternative to the notoriously hard to transfer data of its obvious competitor. But we're sure that was just a coincidence. Right? A hilariously nerdy promo video awaits you after the break.
Google code reveals inner Circles, a social secret weapon?
Nothing livens the day like a blurry screen grab of some Javascript, especially when it hints at the ghostly form of a social networking tool that doesn't officially exist. The code was spotted hiding in plain sight at Google Profiles by Austrian blogger Florian Rohrweck, who fortunately enjoys browsing computer-speak more than playing in the park. Rohrweck noticed the word "circles" used repeatedly in the context of people adding and maintaining groups of contacts, and made the connection to the Google Circles social networking platform that was feverishly rumored and then vehemently denied earlier this year (a saga fully recapped at the More Coverage link). It's impossible to know whether these few lines of code represent a forthcoming service, another social layer on top of existing services, or just pure experimentation on the part of Google devs. In any case, the circular references have apparently now been zapped, leaving us with nothing more than that screen grab -- oh yeah, and Facebook.
MobileMe: Some speculation about the transition to iCloud
I'll start this post off by stating the obvious -- there's a lot about how MobileMe services will transition to iCloud that we don't know yet. But I'm going to take a stab at some of the most pressing questions we've received from TUAW readers regarding the transition. As more facts come in, we'll update this post and/or let you know in a new article. First, let's talk about what's available in MobileMe as it stands today. The details are in that graphic above, which is taken directly from the web-based MobileMe service. There are web-based versions of Mail, Contacts (Address Book), and Calendar (iCal); there's Find My iPhone, which has already become a free service; there's iDisk, a "cloud-based storage" solution; and then there are things like Gallery and iWeb hosting. Speculation #1: Web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will be de-emphasized I'd speculate that the web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will get less attention going forward, and might even disappear on June 30, 2012. Seriously -- who needs them? If you have a Mac or three, you'll sync Mail, Address Book, and iCal through the free iCloud service. The same with your iOS devices, which will send Mail, Contacts, and Calendar changes to the iCloud, where they'll all be echoed to the rest of your digital world. For Windows users, you'll be using Outlook 2010 or 2007 to sync to the iCloud. The only scenario in which you might not be able to get to your "stuff" is when you're using a public computer of some sort at a hotel, on a cruise ship, or at a cybercafé in Spain. Of course, you don't want that to happen, so you'll have your iOS device with you. Hook up to Wi-Fi or use your 3G data service, and the problem is solved. That's why they call them mobile devices. [The counterargument would be that dropping web-based access to PIM and email from iCloud would be a pretty big competitive disadvantage for the service, compared to Google and Microsoft offerings. It's equally likely that the web components will simply flip over from MobileMe to iCloud without any new features or engineering effort -- since Apple is already doing a passable job on them. –Ed.] Speculation #2: iDisk disappears Apple's already stated that iCloud will back up your content -- music, photos, apps, and documents. But there's nothing out there about what will happen to your other stuff. I personally have about 15 GB of iDisk storage available to me on MobileMe, of which I've actually used about 3 GB. All of my important data is sitting out in my Dropbox, syncing between my Macs and iOS devices. I personally don't see the need for iDisk in this world of Dropbox, but there are others who may be using iDisk since they either don't know about Dropbox and similar services or don't want to migrate to them. I think iDisk is going to go extinct, but that Apple will provide iDisk users with a variety of third-party cloud storage solutions and warn them to migrate their data well in advance. There is a full year to prepare. Speculation #3: Gallery is toast Gallery was Apple's way of creating web-based photo albums of your photos for sharing with friends and relatives. Once again, I can't see a need for it in the post-MobileMe world. Apple has already provided an "out" to those who want to share their photos to the world -- iPhoto supports sharing pictures to both Flickr and Facebook. I don't know what Flickr's membership is these days, but Facebook has well over 600 million users, and a good number of them may be former or current MobileMe subscribers. Those two services are perfect for photo sharing, and I'd be willing to bet that the current number of photos hosted in Gallery is a tiny fraction of the number out on Facebook or Flickr. Another reason I think Gallery is going away is the tendency for people to use iOS devices as a sort of electronic photo album. I don't know how many times I've seen my wife show off photos of our trips to friends or complete strangers using either her iPhone or iPad. It's a lot easier than telling them to go out to some long-winded MobileMe URL to see a gallery of pictures. Speculation #4: So long, iWeb hosting As the author of several editions of a book on iWeb, I have a vested interest in the future of this Apple product. However, the future just doesn't look all that bright for iWeb. The software hasn't been updated recently, and there is a lot of rumbling out on the Apple Support Forums about what will happen when MobileMe disappears. My guess? Apple will once again tell MobileMe users that they need to find their own hosting. iWeb can publish websites to a number of hosts, so it's no big deal to republish on a new one. I even wrote a post almost two years ago about how to use free Dropbox space to host an iWeb site, so there's a solution. Finally, a significant portion of the people who set up iWeb sites initially were putting together personal sites. Many of those people have probably gone the easy route and are either letting friends know about their lives via Twitter and Facebook, or have set up sites with free services, like Blogger or WordPress.com. Nevertheless, judging by the frustration and concern on Apple's support boards, this may be one of the trickiest transitions to manage. Conclusion Before some of our readers who are adverse to change go all ballistic on me in the comments, remember what I said at the beginning -- we don't really know what's going to happen to some of these services between now and the demise of MobileMe on June 30, 2012. All of this is speculation about what will happen, based on my personal perspective. If you have an alternative idea, or you're a disgruntled MobileMe employee who wants to spill the beans, please let us know about it in the comments or send us a tip via the "tip us" button at the top of the page.
Gmail now stores up to 25,000 contacts for the insanely popular
Are you quietly proud of the girth of your social circle? Do you think having 146 Facebook buddies is impressive? Snap out of it, saddo. Some Gmail users have thousands upon thousands of contacts in their list -- so many, in fact, that they've been begging Google to increase its 10,000 limit. The Big G has now obliged these jabbering fiends, yanking the limit up to 25,000 and also boosting available cloud storage to 128KB per contact instead of 32KB. We imagine this could be of some help to business users perhaps, or those nice strangers who send out stock tips. But for the rest of us, the gesture is about as inconsequential as the professionally good-looking.
Apple files patent for graphics-based contact management
AppleInsider has discovered a recently filed patent by Apple that would, if implemented, overhaul the way users navigate through their contacts on the iPhone. The patent, "Segmented Graphical Representations for Recommending Elements," describes a way for users to navigate through their iOS contacts in a way other than through text-based lists. An example of how Apple would use graphical elements to let users sort through their contacts would be by presenting a collection of graphical tiles which display thumbnail photographs of the contacts. Tap on the photograph to view that contact's information or (perhaps) directly call them. Using images for contact navigation isn't limited to just an individual contact's photo, however. Apple also states that people who work in the same company, for example, could be grouped into one image such as the company's logo. Click on the logo to see all the contacts you have at that company. The patent also describes how graphics-based representation system could be applied to music, allowing users to search through their music by album covers presented in a mosaic tile. Apple typically files patents for things that never materialize, but that's not to say this graphics-based music and contact management system won't show up in iOS 5. The Contacts app itself has not seen a significant update since its inception in the first iPhone OS, while the iPod/Music software in iOS has received very few updates since its inception as well. Now about that Weather app (is a location-based/rotate-to-view-hourly-forecast weather app really that hard?)...
Google disables contact sync in Facebook for Android, but only Nexus S for now
You know that Android 2.3.3 update that's trickling out to Nexus S smartphones right now? Google's decided to take this opportunity to push its data portability agenda with regards to Android. Simply put, the feature of the Facebook for Android app to provide the social network's stored contact information to your Nexus S has been revoked from here on out, and as soon as you get the update all that contact information will disappear from your contacts app on your phone. We've spent a while chatting with a Google rep, and they explained that the company is actually just reinstating the official rules -- typically, apps have to use Android's contacts API, but Facebook was granted an exception which allowed its contacts to remain in the cloud. In effect, what Google's claims it's doing here is the same thing that would happen if you uninstalled the app, or deleted your Facebook account -- your contacts created and stored in the network would no longer be visible in your contacts app. In other words, Google's attempting to push Facebook into making that data available to itself, which would be handy (think of the other apps that could use your Facebook data on the go) but potentially worrisome in terms of privacy as well. Either way, the argument is not likely to directly affect many individuals in the short term -- Google tells us that Facebook's sync privileges will only be revoked in the Nexus S (not the Nexus One) and other "lead devices" yet to come. Read the company's full statement after the break, and decide for yourself if this is worth arguing about.
Google Social Search update makes your friends more relevant, difficult to ignore
Google's been talking up its Social Search function for sometime, but up until now your friends' tweets probably haven't made it to the top of your search results -- unless of course you're besties with TMZ, and you've been searching the Miley Cyrus bong salvia rip again. Thankfully, it looks as if that could change with El Goog's latest update to the socially minded search function, which now mixes updates from your contacts' various online accounts, like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, in with the standard search fare -- pulling them up from their previous position at the bottom of your results. Google's also included a photo and annotation to show the origins of relevant links, and given you the ability to manage how you connect your accounts -- either publicly through your profile or privately through your account. The new functions started rolling out yesterday, which means you could be seeing a whole lot more from those contacts you regretted friending in the first place. Isn't social media a wonderful / disastrous thing?
VZ Contact Transfer will move contacts from Verizon's cloud to your iPhone
If you're upgrading from a Verizon dumbphone all the way up to the iPhone, it's possible you were using the carrier's Backup Assistant to keep your contacts safe and secure up in the cloud -- but the fact is, you're definitely not going to be using it anymore (trust us on that one). So, what to do? Well, Big Red is helpfully providing a VZ Contact Transfer app -- already available in the App Store -- that'll move contacts down from Backup Assistant and into your iPhone's storage. Once they're there, you can do whatever you want: set up ActiveSync to get them into Google, for example, or just let them transfer up to your Mac or PC. One less reason to stay on that Coupe, right?
iPhone 101: Save extensions in Contacts
Having friends with an office job in the typical corporate environment often times means having to dial a desk phone with an extension. As Lifehacker points out, this usually results in having to memorize a contact's direct extension for use after dialing the office's main line. The difficulty comes from the fact that simply dialing someone's extension immediately after the main line number will not work. The internal phone system of the company you are calling will not recognize the extension has been dialed until there is a connection between the caller and the system. To solve this problem, cell phones have functionality that allows users to save a "pause" in between a main line number and a contact's extension. This gives an automated phone system time to answer the call and then after the pause has occurred, receive the extension from the caller. Your humble iPhone supports this functionality, and it's very useful when needing to dial colleagues at the office rather than on their mobile phone. TheiPhoneWebsite.com has a handy tutorial that shows you how to save a "pause" followed by an extension using the iPhone Contacts app. In order to input a pause in your contact's phone number, you need to open the contact for editing using either the Phone or Contacts app on your iPhone or iPod touch. Tap on the number you wish to modify, and when the dial pad appears, press the "+*#" button on the lower left. This will change the dial pad as seen above and allow you to insert a pause (shown as a comma) into your contact's phone number. Add the extension to the end of the number, after the comma, and hit Save. Now when tapping on the contact's office number to initiate a call, you will not be required to dial the extension after the phone system picks up. You will automatically be transferred to cell phone dialing nirvana, or at least to the person you were trying to reach. [via Lifehacker]
Gmail can now restore deleted contacts, still can't mend broken friendships
So what if Google knows and remembers all our data, at least it's turning that stuff into something useful. The latest enhancement to its Gmail client is a neat Contacts restoration option, which can rewind you back to a maximum of 30 days ago, offering a chance to recover rashly deleted email addresses or to remedy an ill-advised sync with any of your other contact-keeping services. As is par for the course with Gmail, it's a neat and seemingly minor improvement that'll probably keep users from leaving it for greener pastures over the long term as they grow accustomed to its security. Just how Google likes it.
New birthday icon for Calendar in iOS 4.2
The release of iOS 4.2 has brought us a nice little surprise in the form of the new icon shown in this post. If you're tracking birthdays in your Contacts application, those birthdays will appear in your iCal calendar with a little gift package icon. It's a nice little touch to the friendly organizer application, and it helps you visually spot that special day for your loved ones. No one's made a big deal about this being a new feature in iOS 4.2, of course, since it's such a small detail (much as the new Voice Memos icon is a small detail). But for those of us who rank reaching out to loved ones to say "Happy Birthday" as a priority in our to-do list, this little touch might be a favorite change in iOS 4.2. In order to set up this functionality, pull up the Contacts record for the person whose birthday you want to track. Select Edit in the upper right hand corner, scroll to the bottom and tap "add field." Then enter the birthday, and the date will show up in your calendar app. Updated to correct iCal/Calendar app mixup. Thanks to Ryan for the tip!
City of Heroes previews the coming Issue 19
We've known about the bare basics of Issue 19 for a little while now, but City of Heroes players have just been treated to a new explosion of information about the game's next major content patch. And it promises to be quite a big update, with two new task forces, new events in Praetoria, and some alternate animations and auras that had not been previously announced. Several powers will now have a number of locations that can be used as a launching point, so you could fire your Radiation Blasts from your eyes, one hand, both hands, or other possibilities. More tip and morality missions are being added, as well as the option for characters who were not from Praetoria to enter the city. It couldn't come at a better time, as Praetoria's infiltration and invasion are the center of the two new task forces. Overseen by Apex and Tin Mage, two important lore figures, the chains have characters face off against Praetors and uniquely Praetorian enemies to keep their world safe from Emperor Cole's designs. There are also new live events being added in Praetoria, such as a mass protest that heroes can take part in or help shut down. With the previously announced first Incarnate slot and the move of Fitness to inherent (with a slight clarification of unclear wording), the update promises to be an infusion of both content and systems for City of Heroes, so take a look at the official rundown for more.
Gmail's Contacts overhauled, general layout tweaked
Let's be honest with ourselves, the contacts manager in Gmail used to look and act like it was made in 1994. Clunky, inflexible, and pretty intensive on manual labor, it was the sort of thing you just didn't bother to fiddle with too much. That plight may be at an end now, however, as Google has upgraded the whole experience to better align it with the rest of its email service. Newly added features include keyboard shortcuts, custom labels, sorting by last name, and autosave, which together with a UI realignment make your list of buddies far easier to both navigate and alter. Along with this Contacts update, Google is rolling out a few subtle nips and tucks to the overall Gmail interface, the biggest of which is the commitment of the top-left corner to a trifecta of items: Mail, Contacts, and Tasks. Oh, and some header optimizations have resulted in the top message in your inbox now appearing a whole 16 pixels higher. Can't say Google is neglecting the details.
Sync Wars: Address Book vs. Google Contacts
Steven Frank from Panic has outlined several important differences between the way that Address Book (on Snow Leopard) and Google Contacts manage data. This is on his personal website. He's quick to point out that it is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but it reflects several things that I also noticed. A few months ago, I had the notion to replace my MobileMe subscription with syncing to Google services, using BusyCal (whose icon is shown here) for calendars and either BusySync or Address Book's own built-in support for syncing contacts to Google. The experiment was short-lived. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to do, but there are some limitations and incompatibilities. As one example, when you create an event on the iPhone calendar, you can create two alarms. I use this all of the time. The first alarm is a "Hey, don't forget this is coming up" reminder, and the second alarm tells me "Hey! You need to deal with this now." When syncing to a Google Calendar, you can only create one alarm. Is that a major difference? No, but it's not insignificant. Read on...
