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Shazam now rides shotgun with any TV show in the US, gets cozier with Facebook
Shazam doesn't want to let GetGlue control all our couch potato time -- it just rolled out an upgrade to its TV component that lets the mobile app provide social sharing, soundtrack and trivia details for nearly any TV show in the US, not just those deemed worthy of special attention. The app mirrors the program it's looking at -- we'll see stats instead of IMDb if we're watching hockey, for example. Whether or not attention is locked on the bigger screen in the living room, Shazam's little screen is making Facebook more a centerpiece of the experience. Media mavens can comment on friends' tagging habits and post their own tags to their Facebook timelines for all to see. The wider universe of TV shows should be available today, although we'll have to wait for an update in the "coming weeks" to broadcast our tastes in media with the rest of the world.
Facebook adds mention tagging to Open Graph for more efficient name-dropping
Facebook has given developers that link to the social network with Open Graph a new way let let users play tag with their friends -- while also increasing exposure to their app. It's called mention tagging, and allows a user to link a friend in the text body of a message, and is not to be confused with action tagging, an existing feature which references friends only in story text. The option requires a deliberate action by the user, so the developer must implement a way to clearly show how to do that with an icon (as shown above for Foursquare) or drop-down menu, for instance. Apps must also distinguish between action and mention tags, and are not allowed to pre-fill them in the message -- that can only be done by the user. Though no privacy changes are needed, Facebook requires apps using the feature to request user approval before any action can be taken. All that would increase tagging and app visibility significantly -- so developers will likely be all over it.
Twitter quietly adds clickable stock symbols
It might not pack the same thrill as the rumors of in-feed video, but Twitter has added clickable stock symbols on tweets. This now throws up search results for both the stock and the company, using a new 'cash' tag, like $FB, to differentiate from typical links and tags. As noted by TNW, it's bad news for the founder of StockTwits, a service that offered similar functionality to gather tweet-based financial nuggets. The new feature is live across Twitter's web client -- though it hasn't hit TweetDeck just yet -- and should make discovering exactly how many millions companies have made (or lost) all a bit faster.
Google adds spam explanation to Gmail, steers clear of enlightenment
Why is this message in spam? It's a question we find ourselves asking our Gmail boxes almost daily, when messages that really should have made it through to the inbox end up in electronic purgatory instead. So why does Google's algorithm choose to filter certain legitimate messages, while letting the vast majority arrive unscathed? The answer can now be found atop each message filed as spam, presented with the simplest of explanations, that generally fails to provide any actual insight as to the email's assigned delivery. Such worthless gems as "It's similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters," "It contains content that's typically used in spam messages" or "Many people marked similar messages as spam" now await you above each note -- seemingly assigned just as casually as the emails themselves.
Treehouse Labs tracks objects with your iPhone via BiKN
Treehouse Labs was one of a few companies at CES hosted inside the booth of a semiconductor company, because Treehouse is using that company's chips for its own products. Treehouse's main product on display was something called "BiKN" (pronounced "beacon"), which uses relatively tiny RFID tags and near-field communications to track various objects using almost any iOS device. Because the iPhone doesn't have an RFID/NFC reader built in (yet -- someday most mobile devices may include one), you'll need an extra iPhone case that slips around the iPhone and connects to the dock connector. The other side of the system is what's called a "tag," which can be attached to your keys, a child, a pet, or anything else you want to keep track of in local space (within a few hundred feet or so). Put the tag on something, load up a tracking app on the iPhone, and you'll be able to see where the item is or ping one item with a bit of playable audio. Treehouse will be selling the case for around US$99 sometime next month, and a set of two tags can be purchased for $49. The standard BiKN kit is pretty basic and simply helps you detect and follow tagged items on the iPhone. Treehouse is looking to license the system to other companies, which means you may see BiKN technology pop up embedded in other gadgets -- possibly the iPhone itself. One of the demos at CES showed a plant that had a tag monitoring its own water level; a separate "gateway" enabled the plant to get more water when the tag said the water level was low. This kind of monitor circuit could be embedded in a device and the iPhone through an app, which means you could set up a pretty simple system of home automation. You could even do things like have multiple tags beep when they go out of range. The possibilities are fascinating, and Treehouse is working on getting this kind of technology out to anyone who is interested in using or selling it. Our iPhones and iPads are quickly becoming the center of our connected worlds, even at home; Treehouse's system is one of many ways to connect even more items to that network, making it more useful for all of us.
Doh uses RFID and Arduino to help you remember your wallet, continues search for the 'Any Key'
If you can dream it, Arduino can help you build it -- perhaps with a dash of MakerBot thrown in for good measure. The latest homebrew project to hit the ol' inbox sounds an alarm whenever you leave a room without a registered item. Doh (named in Homer Simpson's honor, we presume), uses a trio of devices to track items that you usually travel with, like your keys or a cellphone. After you've assembled the rather complex contraption, you affix color-coded RFID tags to your gadgets, before registering them with the Arduino-based host. If you leave the room without all of the items that you've registered as a "grouping," a door handle-mounted display will indicate what's missing by flashing its color and sounding an alarm. If you've forgotten multiple items, the display will cycle through the associated colors. There's also a two-way "buzzing tag" that beeps until it's found, if you wish to add that to your collection. It's not a turnkey solution by any means, but unlike Homer, at least you're not being tasked with preventing nuclear meltdown. And if you're looking for a time-proven alternative, a pen and a pad of stickies should do. Jump past the break for a demo video, banjo-equipped soundtrack and all.
Google+ sneaks NFC into its Android app, gets caught red-handed
NFC is gradually turning to the social side, thanks to new functionality found within the Google+ app for Android. Software developer Ridzuan Ashim discovered that, when used on an NFC-enabled device, you can read tags and share them through the new social networking service. After scanning, the OS asks you if you want to share the associated text with Google+ or another relevant program. Though the abilities seem somewhat limited for now, we'll likely see more developer support tossed in as the service matures. Using NFC in this way could lead us into a group Huddle, check us in at a restaurant and share it with our Circles, and perhaps even add us into somebody's Circle or Hangout. It's only functional on a limited number of Android devices for now, so if you happen to use a Nexus S and have been invited to the exclusive club better known as Google+, you're a prime candidate for giving it a look-see. If the above criteria doesn't apply, check out the video below to experience all that near-field glory through someone else's phone.
Microsoft 'Tags' 2 billion real-world objects with its phone-friendly barcodes
Microsoft might be late to the cameraphone-able barcode game, but it appears to be making up for lost time. Its multi-colored (and, frankly, rather attractive) Tag barcodes added a few important innovations on top of the general QR code concept, and apparently to good effect: 2 billion Tags have been printed since the January 2009 launch, and 1 billion of those Tags were printed in the past four months. Sounds like Microsoft has found some momentum, and they claim to have gained a lead in the publishing industry already. Obviously, the analytics, customization, and anti-fragmentation nature appeals to Big Barcode, but we'll have to wait and see if Tag is the ultimate choice of the everyman. Plus, won't ads be able to hack our brains and implant URLs at-will soon enough? We're holding out for that.
Drowning in information? Tags can help
If you're anything like me you have lots and lots of information. Endless folders and files are scattered about, and while Spotlight in Mac OS X is very helpful, it's not a perfect fit for every situation. One solution I've found very helpful is Tags, from Gravity Apps. Our own Brett Terpstra took a look at version 1 of the program back in January of 2009, and now the app has been updated to make it even more useful. Click here to see what's changed in this new version. Tags is a system-wide method of tagging just about anything on your Mac for easy retrieval. The real power comes from associating different file types that you may want to relate, like a web page, photo, contact and note. The tagging easily takes place from within the application, and requires a couple of keystrokes. Control-Space bar brings up the tagging GUI, and Option-Space bar triggers the search menu. If those hot-keys conflict with something else you use, they can be easily changed.
Shazam updates for iOS 4.0, adds subscription model for Encore features
The great Shazam app, which I'm still using after downloading it to my iPhone on day one, has released another update, bringing the whole suite of apps (including the paid Shazam Encore and the Shazam (RED) version) to version 3.3. This one updates the app for iOS 4.0 and includes Retina Display graphics and support for fast app switching. Version 3.3 also adds some setting customization options like "tag on startup," improved artist info, a new Discover tab with tag charts and preview clips for the top songs tagged in 20 different countries, and quick shortcut icons for sending the music off to iTunes or to Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, the free Shazam app now offers a subscription model upgrade to the paid version, which allows for as many tags as you want, extra features like "Drive and Tag," and more information about the songs you hear with the app. For a limited price of $2.99, you can get access to Shazam Encore for an entire year, or for $4.99 (the price of the paid app on the App Store), you can get a "lifetime subscription." Clearly Shazam wants to offer something a little cheaper for customers who aren't sure if they'll use the app that much, but honestly, if you want the pro options, the Encore version is worth the $5. On the other hand, all I've ever had is the free version, and for the occasional "hear a song on the radio or in a store and wonder what the heck it is," Shazam has served me quite well. Good to know it'll now look and run better on the iPhone 4.
Walmart to add RFID tags to individual items, freak out privacy advocates
Walmart's been pushing RFID for years now, using it to better manage the company's vast inventories and understand where products are and how fast they're approaching. Now, the mega-retailer is about to take things to another level, and it just might push competitors into getting with the program. As of now, there's limited consumer-facing benefit to tracking pallets in transit, but a Wall Street Journal report suggests that Wally World will be placing radio-frequency ID tags on individual clothes. The initiative is slated to kick off next month, and it's expected to help apparel managers know when certain sizes and colors are depleted and need to be restocked. In theory, having this ability will ensure that consumers never see their desired size or hue as sold out, and if the clothing trial is successful, the tags could be rolled out to a near-infinite amount of kit. Of course, privacy advocates are all wound up about the idea, though it seems as if most sniffing concerns could be dealt with if the tags were removed as customers departed the store. Unless you're leaving in a hurry, that is...
Microsoft Tag makes a video appearance, still seeking popularity
"It's the hyperlink in the physical world" says a Microsoft PR man, giving us the most succinct definition of what Redmond's Tag initiative is all about. Having announced its alternative take on the barcode at CES 2009, Microsoft has been working behind the scenes on proliferating the use of these multicolored Tags, which are designed to be snapped by nearby cameraphones. Once the pattern is recognized, you can obtain digital content directly on your phone -- whether it be a website link, YouTube video, or whatever -- and the uses are pretty much limitless: business cards, product packaging, magazines, anything that can benefit from supplemental online content and has a flat surface is a candidate to be Tagged. Such is the theory anyhow, and Microsoft's doing all it can to make it happen, with software for most mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Video demonstration after the break.
New Scientist and MIT track your trash for the good of the planet
On a long enough timeline, all gadgets, white goods, furniture and consumables end up in the trash bin, and the latest tech from MIT is designed to track their subsequent journey from your porch to the great beyond. Partnering with the New Scientist magazine, researchers are hoping that by mapping where garbage ends up, they can awaken that atrophied muscle of environmental awareness in us all. The project will attach SIM cards to particular items of trash, which will beep out their location information every 15 minutes. You might think this somewhat underwhelming -- given all the bells, whistles and bomb-proofing that garbage cans have been adorned with over the years -- but interest appears high enough to justify exhibitions of the project in New York and Seattle starting this September.
WoW Insider Show live this afternoon on Ustream
Our podcast is back on the air again today, and it's going to be a good one: not only will Turpster and I welcome back Amanda Dean, but Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington, our newest writer here on the site, will join us to talk about his experiences blogging and playing his Hunter. And of course we'll chat about the most popular posts of the past week, including those mount and travel changes that are raising such a fuss, the Mountain Dew Battle-bots, and why an Authenticator (probably) can't steer you wrong. Plus, we'll answer your emails -- we've gotten quite a few movie posters from Turpster's suggestion last week, so stay tuned to hear about those (and you'll be able to see them here on our post next Monday).Tune in this afternoon over on the our Ustream page at June 13, 2009 3:30 PM EDT var date_span = document.getElementById("date"); var date = new Date(date_span.innerHTML); var monthname=new Array("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"); var weekday=new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday", "Friday","Saturday"); var year = date.getFullYear(); var day_of_month = date.getDate(); var month = monthname[date.getMonth()]; var day = weekday[date.getDay()]; var hour = date.getHours(); if (hour > 11) { if (hour > 12) {hour -= 12} am_pm = "PM"; } else { am_pm = "AM"; } var minute = date.getMinutes(); if (minute < 10) { minute = "0"+minute; } date_string = day + ", " + month + " " + day_of_month; date_string += " at " + hour + ":" + minute + " " + am_pm; offset = -date.getTimezoneOffset()/60; if (offset >= 0) { offset = "+"+offset; } date_string += " in your time zone (GMT"+offset+")"; date_span.innerHTML = (date_string); , or you can jump after the break to see an embedded feed. It should be a good time as always, so stop by and say hi if you're around.
Tags takes organization to a new level
The idea of tagging files as an organization and project management method has been around for some time now, and we've mentioned applications in the past (FileSpot, TagBot, Punakea ... ) which touched on some useful applications for the tagging method. A truly seamless, system-wide implementation, however, has been hard to find. Back at WWDC, Gravity applications gave me a taste of a new application which takes the concept to a new level. Tags, finally released yesterday, provides a hotkey-triggered HUD which allows tagging and searching from a wide range of applications, including: Finder and Path Finder Mail Address Book iPhoto Safari Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.) Adobe Photoshop Xcode Rapidweaver Omnioutliner Pages and Keynote Quicktime The list goes on. Basically, any application which can tell AppleScript what the current context is will work with Tags. Those that don't can also have their items tagged from Finder, which is especially easy if they have a "Reveal in Finder" shortcut. Tags uses Spotlight metadata instead of the old Spotlight comments method. Files tagged with Tags are immediately indexed in Spotlight, allowing for searches and Smart Folders outside of Tags, as well as integration with other Spotlight-enabled applications. Its keyword storage method is directly compatible with Ironic Software's Deep, and the same method is planned for use in Leap, eventually. Ironic has actually just announced OpenMeta, an open source library for accessing and modifying this kind of metadata (more on that coming soon). Read on for more on the concepts behind Tags.
Use 'Company' field in iPhone's Contacts app for tagging
The social media movement has trained us well to tag just about everything we see. The presence of tags on photos, videos, blog posts and even to-do items has become ubiquitous.So this simple tip, from reader Greg F., struck me as an obvious, easy trick to help categorize contacts inside the iPhone's Contacts app. It involves using the Company field in Contacts to record tags -- just put in your tags, separated by a space, instead of a company name.First things first. Why would you want to categorize contacts with tags? Consider Greg's example. When using the contact search feature to make a call, send an email or text message, he enters a tag, like 'drinkingbuddies,' instead of individual names. In return he's presented with a full list of contacts he can invite out for a beer.Simple, powerful and a great way to prevent leaving anyone out when sending a quick, after-work invite. Other useful tags that come to my mind are 'family,' 'taxis,' 'pizzaplaces' and 'therapists.' It's not ideal, obviously, for contacts that actually have a real company name associated with them.There's more to this though. Often I find myself sending photos from my iPhone, through email, to my Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitpic accounts. So I tagged each of those contacts 'Photos.' Now, it's a simple task to look these addresses up and pick the appropriate ones.It's unfortunate the iPhone doesn't allow you to select more than one contact at a time, though. So even with this tip, it's still a time-consuming process to add multiple contacts to an email or SMS.
MailTags 2.1.1 available now
Scott Morrison sends word that MailTags, the Mail plugin that lets you both tag your emails and connect them directly up to iCal, has hit 2.1.1. The 2.1 release came a few days ago, and introduced incoming reply tagging-- whenever you sent out a message with tags on it, the reply that came back automatically received the same tags-- and the 2.1.1 update improves that feature. You can now tag an outgoing message as "expect reply," and MailTags can notify you through Growl and with highlighting that the reply has arrived.The release also includes an example AppleScript that lets you use a "killed" tag to mark a message and any incoming replies to it as read-- if a thread has ceased to be important to you, you can ignore it completely. Bugfixes involving iCal interaction have also been implemented, and a column sizing interface improvement has been added.The 2.1.1 update is a maintenance update and available for free to MailTags users over at the website. If you haven't bought the plugin yet, you can get it here for $29.95.
GTD with VoodooPad
Chris at Trichech.us has written up a short guide (and included a useful little AppleScript) on how to run GTD in VoodooPad, the get-it-down quick application that we love so much here at TUAW.Basically it revolves around a series of tags-- if you have a task that needs to be done in a certain context (such as home or office, or even as specific as "at the computer" or as general as "thinking"), you just tag it with @ and then whatever the tag is. When the script is run, it grabs all of the tagged lines, and combines them all on one page, so you have an at-a-glance look at what needs to be done where. And you can even date items, and see them placed on the "Actions" page as well.The big problem with me and any GTD plan is just that I tend to be so picky-- if a system doesn't work exactly the way I want it to, I tend to get lazy and start ditching it for good old pen and paper again (which causes me to fall back into the same old gaps). But Chris' system looks solid enough to use without a lot of configuration, and yet adaptable enough that I can shape it to my own mind. If you've got VoodooPad (and if you don't, why not) and you're on the hunt for a GTD system, give it a try.[ via Gus Mueller ]
Keyword Manager updated for iPhoto '08
While I wasn't exactly dying without Keyword Manager in iPhoto '08 just yet, thanks to its new built-in keyword abilities, I am nonetheless relieved to see that my favorite iPhoto keyword plug-in for power users has just been updated for the latest version. While the major new feature in Keyword Manager v1.3 is of course iPhoto '08 compatibility, I have noticed what I believe is a new, dedicated Keyword Manager button added to the controls in the lower left of the iPhoto window (or has that been there all along? I've always just used the keyboard shortcut to invoke it so I never looked down there). Also on the new features list is slightly better performance when selecting many photos, an updated UI for the Keyword Manager windows to match iPhoto '08's new Adjust palette UI, and updates to the Danish translation of the plug-in. It is also worth noting that Keyword Manager still works with iPhoto '06 as well.A demo is available from Bullstorm Software, while a license costs $19 USD (or €19).
iPhoto '08 does tagging right
I've been waiting (impatiently) for a tagging UI like this to come to iPhoto for some time now, and I'm generally happy to say that iPhoto '08 finally does tagging well (for the sake of this post, however, I'll be using the terms 'tags' and 'keywords' interchangeably, since iPhoto refuses to adopt the web 2.0 terminology). If you display keywords beneath your photos (View > Keywords or shift-command-K), you can simply click below your photo in that field (even if it doesn't have any keywords yet) and begin typing. iPhoto will attempt to auto-fill from your keyword library, or it will add new keywords you create on the fly. For keyword ninjas this still might not replace powerful plug-ins like Keyword Manager, but it's definitely a step in the right direction for the general iPhoto user. Since it's barely been 24 hours, Keyword Manager understandably hasn't updated yet, but I don't find myself gasping for breath without it. Thanks to this improvement and others which I'll explore, iPhoto has gained respectable features that finally allow users to manage their library with the power of tags. Read on to see what else is new with iPhoto's keyword features.
