End User

"Cuil" Search Engine Launches, Kind of Doesn't Work

A new search engine dubbed Cuil (pronounced "cool") launched recently. There've been many pretenders to Google's throne in the past decade, but this one comes with a serious pedigree: it was designed by a husband and wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, with Russell Power. Patterson and Power are former Google heavyweights, and Costello was the founder of Xift.

Cuil claims to be the world's largest search engine, indexing 121,617,892,992 web pages at the time of this writing. Patterson claims that Cuil's new algorithms can index faster and at a lower cost, with more relevant results than Google's current algorithm.

So far, it's got a lot of catching up to do. Shortly after the site went live on Monday it crashed and stayed down for much of the day due to the demand. (A curse of marketing hype, sure, but a search engine of all things needs to support the server load.) Early reports say that search results are often irrelevant or even downright confusing. I myself am having quite a difficult time getting useful results from Cuil--the "magazine layout" format often returns results with images that are completely unrelated to the searched content--pictures that aren't even hosted by or linked to by sites in the search results, making me wonder how the heck they ended up there.

Are any of you having any luck with Cuil? Or conversely, what's your funniest (and safe for work, now) irrelevant search result?

--Aric A.

Lightroom 2.0 released: Choose the colors that make up YOUR world

There's a sequel that has the whole world talking … OK, it's The Dark Knight. But there's one that has photography geeks talking today, and it's Lightroom 2.0. Many of the changes we've already seen in the beta, especially the adjustment brush, have been refined, and there are a slew of new features as well. For example, you can now brush in sharpness and contrast as a localized adjustment, and there's even a powerful "smoothen skin" tool, which gets my vote as Most Likely to Be Overused, making subjects look like Final Fantasy characters.

Bites from the Apple: Ghost in the MobileMe

Another week and Apple's launch frustration continues with the focus turning to MobileMe, Apple's replacement for the .Mac service. Despite not even focusing on MobileMe's seemingly uninterrupted string of service outages, Walt Mossberg still doesn't think it's ready for prime-time yet, due to sluggish syncing between iPhone and desktop PCs and unreliable synchronization. David Pogue chimes in at the New York Times, and gets fed up with the lack of communication about outages and fixes from Apple support, equating it to "an airplane that's stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn't come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is...."

Oh yeah, it's still hard to get an iPhone 3G (though stock analysts say this is a good thing.) On the bright side, though, it's looking like stores are starting to receive more stock of the iPhone as of the end of this week. You can check out this handy web site created by Chris Barnes, which shows availability by store as compiled from an Apple data feed. (The caveat being Apple's feed isn't completely reliable--seems to be Apple's theme of the month--so you should call ahead to your Apple Store of choice.)

• Rumor Watch: Embedded within the conference call to announce Q3 earnings (good, with Mac shipments up 41 percent in year-over-year sales) were several comments alluding to a "state-of-the-art product" coming out later this year. Jason O'Grady over at ZDNet's Apple Core (which also provides the concept photo at right) is pretty confident it's going to be the long-rumored iTablet.

  We may also be seeing a (PRODUCT) RED version of the iPhone 3G by the holiday season (via CrunchGear).

• The first update to the iPhone 2.0 software (version 2.1) might be seeing the light of day for non-developers soon, and it might include the ability to copy-and-paste text as well as expanded GPS features that could allow turn-by-turn navigation (via MacNN).

• If you've got two iPhones in your house (or an iPhone and an iTouch), it looks like you can share applications downloaded from the iTunes App Store thanks to Apple's FairPlay DRM, which allows you to authorize up to 5 computer devices to access items purchased from the iTunes Store (via TUAW).

• How fast is the iPhone 3G on 3G networks? It depends on where you are.

• Nancy Scola over at one of my fave enviro blogs, World Changing, applauds Apple for getting greener with its twin iPhone product/software releases:

  Beyond the replaceable battery, the handset, headphones and USB cable are all now PVC-free. The circuit board is produced without bromine. The LCD is made sans mercury. And let's back up a bit -- buying a new iPhone might not even be necessary. The software 2.0 upgrade means that owners of first-gen phones don't even need to buy a 3G to get most of the newest functionality.

  But she thinks Apple could do better in trumpeting its gadget greenness (which includes a policy of recycling old cell phones and iPods, regardless of manufacturer) to better educate the public.

• Saul Hansell at the NYTimes' Bits blog wonders if Apple could emulate Microsoft's plan for distributing community games to Xbox 360 devices and provide an App Store for its Apple TV.

  This could serve as a basic game platform for Apple–not so basic if the company beefs up the graphic chip in the device. Moreover, apps for Apple TV could offer the sort of info snacking that iPhone apps do: weather, yellow pages, photo sharing, viral videos and so on. I assume video, photos and entertainment apps would be most popular, but there is someone who will do anything. And that’s the beauty of an open environment.

  As an Apple TV owner (and occasional user), I wholeheartedly endorse any idea to make it more usable. Speaking of which, Merlin Mann at 43 Folders notes that the aTV Flash collection of Apple TV hackery is back and includes new functionality such as USB Drive support.

• Adam Engst at TidBITS informs us that the latest iteration of the iTunes software (7.7) is removing accented characters from the names of songs and artists. I started noticing this earlier this week when I had some time to work on my personal iTunes clean-up project (caused by a failing hard drive), but hadn't put it together that the update was causing the problem. This is a big bummer for folks like myself who have a lot of non-English music in their collections (I now have loads of French albums that are unreadable), as it currently requires manual correction.

• I'm still in a quandary over what to-do application to get from the App Store for my iPhone. Macworld has a pretty detailed review of OmniFocus, which sounds like a very powerful task organizer that also requires adherence to the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity world view (as well as a C-Note, as the iPhone app is $20 and the desktop application costs an additional $80). The review does note that the Things app from Cultured Code is a good GTD/tasking alternative that's not as robust and about half the price (for both iPhone and desktop apps).

--Agen G.N. Schmitz

Announcing End User's Amazon.com Custom Gaming PC Giveaway

Which components go into the ultimate $1,500 computer? We wanted answers, so we challenged the hardcore computer geeks at Maximum PC magazine (www.maximumpc.com) to search through the Amazon.com Computer Components store and spec out the best computer one could build from approximately $1,500 worth of parts. The result takes the form of Maximum PC’s “Amazon Special Edition” Machine 2008, a high-value, high-performance conglomeration of hardware that’s ready for PC gaming, video editing, home office duties and much, much more.

And we're giving it away--between now and August 15, you can enter for a chance to win this custom PC featured in the September issue of Maximum PC.  Simply check out End User and click on the entry form here or at the top right of the home page to enter for your chance to win.  (You can also check out the contest's official rules there, too.)  We'll announce the winner here on End User on August 20.

If you want to see what's in it, or simply can't wait and want to build your own, check out our Listmania of everything that comes in this custom gaming PC.  And if you're interested in an even higher-end computer, don't forget to check out Maximum PC’s Dream Machine 2008.

--Aric A.

Out-rangefindering the rangefinder: Panasonic LX3

Two years after the release of the LX2, Panasonic has released a new high-quality compact camera, the LX3. They made a slew of interesting changes to the design that run counter to the "pack-more-pixels-in" school of thought that dominates the compact market (and which they sated with the 14.7 megapixel FX150)

Here are the things to know about this camera:

 

• They kept the pixel count the same (10 megapixels) but increased the physical sensor size, which theoretically will decrease image noise and increase dynamic range. Panasonic says it does this by 40 percent. This may be the "Hey, it worked for the D3" school of thought trickling down.

   

• In addition to a more-sensitive sensor, the lens is also more light-sensitive, starting at f/2.0, more than twice as sensitive as most competitors' lenses, meaning lower ISOs are required.

   

• The camera has a small zoom range, which goes from a nice, wide 24mm equivalent to a normalish 60mm. That's right, there's no telephoto on this camera.

Panasonic seems to be marketing this as a companion camera for advanced users who also own a dSLR but don't want to bring it everywhere, and I admit it is intriguing, but that target might be slightly off. This really is a camera for people who would love a digital rangefinder but don't want to spend the cash for a Leica M8. This makes sense, since Leica will doubtless rebrand this camera into a model of their own, as they do for many Panasonics.

Pwnage Tool for 3G iPhone Released

A short, but big announcement:  the iPhone Dev Team has officially released their Pwnage tool to unlock and jailbreak 3G iPhones.  It is backwards compatible, meaning it will also unlock/jailbreak all older versions of the iPhone firmware, but going forward only the 2.0 firmware will be supported for questions and tech help.

If you're not happy with the cost or availability of apps in the iTunes App Store, or if you want to have your cake and eat it to, you can find the Pwnage tool here.

--Aric A.

Bites from the Apple: All Apologies

Pulling out that ol' Dickens chestnut, this last week has been the both best and worst of times for Apple. True, Apple got the iPhone 3G out the door, launched the iPhone 2.0 software and App Store (helping to cement the iPhone as a true mobile platform), and transmogrified its .Mac service into the new, pushy MobileMe. The iPhone 3G has been a success, with sales of 1 million in its first weekend (though that number is disputed by Piper Jaffray's Mac man Gene Munster). But lines were excruciatingly slow thanks to frustratingly un-Apple in-store activations and worldwide server crashes (see last week's post), which The Boy Genius Report noted actually hindered sales (1 million in 21 countries this year compared to 700,000 OG iPhones in its first weekend last year). And now it's looking like we'll be seeing iPhone 3G shortages for the next month, frustrating those standing in line as well as AT&T's corporate customers.

Perhaps an even bigger snafu, and one that still hasn't been put to bed, is the MobileMe transition, which caused Apple to email an apology (and 30-day service extension) to all its customers earlier this week. (Having written one or two "How I Broke the Site" apology emails, I could certainly feel for the devs who were feeling the heat of Steve Jobs' seething fury.) Our pal Glenn Fleishman also notes in TidBITS that Apple is revising its use of the term "push," since MobileMe's synchronization isn't instantaneous but rather lags by about 15 minutes.

And while iPhone Atlas notes there has been some grumbling about the App Store from users (over updates) and developers (no capability to release review copies--definitely a gripe of mine), its release has certainly been the bright spot in Apple's week, with users downloading more than 10 million native applications to their iPhone and iPod touch devices last weekend.

I've taken a few out for a spin since last week's post, and have been pretty satisfied. I had to download Super Monkey Ball for some young friends to try, and their parents are no longer speaking to me since their kids won't stop asking for an iPhone/iPod touch. I've also been quite happy with the Facebook and Twitterific apps (which have reenergized my usage of those services). And I tried some fluff with the PhoneSaber, iBeer and More Cowbell apps (the latter of which is a hit with my toddler).

But the app I was most looking forward to was the NetNewsWire RSS reader, as a lot of my work revolves around keeping up with tech news articles. However, I found that if you have several hundred RSS subscriptions, the synchronization between desktop and online reader (NewsGator) and iPhone app is frustrating. I've since created a new account where I've cherry-picked my most accessed feeds, and that seems to be just fine. But using NewsGator's iPhone-designed web page (m.newsgator.com) might actually be a bit faster and provides more of an overview of the current news items on a single page (hat tip to Jeff Carlson for the tip).

Overall, it's a good start and I'm looking forward to exploring more and adding a few more arrows to my iPhone quiver. But I do have a gripe: there's still no way to synchronize notes or tasks between the iPhone and Apple's native applications on the Mac. I'm less cheesed off about the Notes on my iPhone than TUAW (though it would be good to have a back-up), but I am just perplexed about the seeming inability to capture to-do items created in the Mac's Mail and iCal applications and hook them onto the iPhone. Instead, I'm having to look into third-party options, ranging from free apps (like To Do) that are under-powered to paid apps (like the well-reviewed OmniFocus) that might be overly robust for my needs. I'm still deciding (this is where review copies of apps would be very handy), but I might go with the latter as it will sync with an application on my Mac.

But enough of my kvetching. Let us know about your favorite apps (or biggest gripes in the comments. For more Apple-y goodness from the week that was, join us after the jump...

Back in Black--AMD HD 4870 X2 Previewed

Good news arrived for PC gamers with a healthy amount of cash to spend when previews of AMD's latest video card trickled onto review sites this past Monday. So far the results look very promising. It's wonderful that AMD still has some serious fight in them on the graphics side, with the new 4870 X2 besting the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 in some early benchmarks. Previews have speculated that the card will cost in the neighborhood of $499.
Hopefully games will start making use of the tessellation engine that AMD keeps touting. Though it isn't a feature of Direct X or OpenGL yet, but hopefully Microsoft will be adding it to the Direct X 10.1 API (Which may be renamed to Direct X 11).
The tessellation Engine will allow game developers to create extremely detailed terrains and characters with fewer polygons.This will bring an Incredible amount of detail without increasing demands on processing power.

Check out some previews at:
Anandtech
[H]ardOCP
The Tech Report

image via The Tech report

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love HDMI

Being primarily a PC gamer, I've never thought too highly of the HDMI interface. On a computer, the benefit of having your video and audio signal transferred through one cable (HDMI's first and foremost features), is not very attractive since high end video cards and sound cards are usually not combined into one device.

When it debuted, one of the biggest "features" of HDMI was HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). So being a new interface primarily designed around the concept of not letting us, the end user have complete and total access to our media, didn't earn HDMI many points in my book.

From a technical standpoint, HDMI also seemed more complex than it needed to be, compared to other cables in its manufacturing process. This was probably one of the reasons why early adopters were paying such ridiculous prices for them. In hindsight, I couldn't blame Microsoft and Sony for not initially bundling HDMI cables with their HDMI enabled consoles, nor could I blame the manufacturers of blu-ray and hd-dvd players for omitting them while they were duking it out in the great HD standard war of '07.

But now that HDMI has had time to proliferate, we see it on more home theater devices than ever before. The HDMI interface is even starting to be utilized on some computer components. However the benefit of it has not fully realized itself on the PC. While HDMI inputs are being offered on more and more computer LCDs, video card output support is not growing as quickly.

While it may not be so wonderful in the PC world yet, I finally got to experience some benefits of HDMI when I recently picked up a Playstation 3. Now, while hooking up a game console to a home theater is not a difficult task to begin with, I was still pleasantly surprised at how simple HDMI made it. It was not only easy, but it did not make the rats nest of cables behind my TV any worse than it was. Immensely satisfied with that fact alone, I went on to see that it automagically set my resolution and sound output to the max supported configuration my setup allowed.
Before, my devices required component video cables along with a fragile optical audio toslink cables. Handling that mess was now a thing of the past. Now I have my blu-ray player and my PS3 (yeah, I know PS3s can play blu-ray discs, but I have an unhealthy addiction to electronics) connected to my HDTV with only 2 cables and ZERO setup beyond that. I even have to specify the resolution on my PC when I plug in a LCD, not to mention dealing with video drivers.

Seeing as though I don't do any video ripping, editing, or encoding on my home theater setup, HDCP hasn't bothered me one bit. Also the home theater devices lately have handled this form of copy protection much better. Unlike on a PC where a driver installation gone awry, and installing a non HDCP compliant disc drive or video card could ruin the experience.

The only gripe I still have with HDMI are the multiple versions that exist of the standard. what doesn't help is their poor record of educating consumers on the differences of each. But after looking into the revisions from 1.0 to 1.3 I found that the differences are not that interesting and probably not of much a concern to most consumers. Currently HDMI is up to version 1.3, and is the only revision that provides anything to get excited about.

Some things to keep in mind when shopping for HDMI products is that if you plan to enjoy HD content at 1080p resolution, you will need HDMI version 1.1 cables or above. However HDMI version 1.3 provides a nice boost to refresh rates and color gamut. Version 1.3 effectively lets your HDMI 1.3 enabled devices (like say, a Playstation 3) to output beyond the typical 24-bit color range, 1.3 allows for "deep color" (30, 36, and even 48-bit color). Though this may seem somewhat confusing, it's actually not a terribly bad learning curve since older cables are likely to be phased out as all newer versions are backwards compatible, now wasn't that considerate of them?
As far as I'm concerned, the results are spectacular, installation was a snap, and configuration was almost non existent.
Hopefully HDMI or competing standard, DisplayPort, will find a way to bring this experience over to the PC world in the near future.

Bites from the Apple: The Morning After

For the second straight year, I found myself traveling on the day that the new iPhone gets unleashed, and thusly I had to live vicariously through a colleague's experiences (not that I would have been in line, as I'm sticking with my OG iPhone). Last year my pal Glenn Fleishman dutifully stood in line for the iPhone when it went on sale at 6pm, and he walked out of his selected Apple Store toting his conquest after only an hour--with 300+ people in front of him.

That was not even close to being the case this year, as Apple and AT&T switched up the activation procedure where it had to be done in-store rather than at home via iTunes. And from the sound of my pal Jeff Carlson's Twitter log, it looks like it was quite the headache (to put it in family friendly terms). After arriving an hour before the 8am opening for the great iPhone 3G dash and standing in line with 350+ people, Jeff didn't get his phone (actually, his wife's phone, as he's sticking with the OG iPhone as well) until late in the afternoon. (At least he didn't face a bomb threat.) It seems this was due to the hands-on activation process in the store as well as Apple server crashes preventing the activation process for new iPhone 3G's as well as for OG iPhones that needed re-activation after installing the iPhone 2.0 software update.

Speaking of which, the release of the iPhone 2.0 software is probably the biggest news of this week, since my OG iPhone isn't going anywhere. Thanks to MacRumors, which found a link to the software on Apple's servers, I was able to grab the software a day early and start playing in the new App Store playground. Note, however, that MacRumors is recommending that anyone who updated their OG iPhone with this unofficial download should re-restore the software with the official update found via iTunes, as it seems the leaked download is for 3G models only.

I've been loving my iPhone since I picked it up last September and felt no regrets at dumping the Treo 680 that I'd bought unlocked just a few months previous to that. But with the addition of native applications, I'm loving my iPhone even more as it starts to truly become the computing platform that it's promised to be since it was announced. I started out slow with free downloads of social networking and messaging apps like AIM, Facebook, and Twitterific (note that app links require iTunes). But I'm looking forward to adding the NetNewsWire RSS reader and Todo, which can hook into my Remember the Milk Pro online task list (though I'm hoping an app gets released that works directly with the task management in my Mac's iCal software). And sadly (for my personal productivity), Bejeweled is also available--it will take all my will not to download that one. Let's take a look at what others have spelunked from the App Store...

• The earth2tech blog found several apps that can help you track your gas mileage and graph performance--something quite handy as we head into a new era of high gas prices.

• The popular Pandora personalized online radio service has been ported to an iPhone app, and Wired's Listening Post notes it even streams over EDGE networks.

• TUAW rounds up a couple of app gems including File Magnet, which allows you to transfer files to and from your Mac (Leopard only) from your iPhone or iPod Touch over Wi-Fi.

• Apple also released Remote, a free goodie for all the good iPhone fanboys/girls, which adds an interface for controlling your computer's iTunes or an AppleTV that is nearly identical to the iPod interface on the iPhone (via BoingBoing Gadgets)

• My other handheld gaming obsession looks to be fulfilled by Aki Mahjong from Ambrosia Software, which also released solitair and sudoku apps (via MacNN)

• While not in the initial release of the App Store, it looks like TeleNav will be coming out with an iPhone app for turn-by-turn voice navigation, despite a clause in Apple's iPhone Developer's contract that prohibits sophisticated navigation software other than its own (via MacNN).

• Though it's not an iPhone app, it's good to note that Ambrosia has also released the latest version of its iToner software, compatible with iTunes 7.7 and iPhone Software 2.0, which allows you to create custom ringtones for your iPhone without having to purchase them from the iTunes Store (via Ars Technica)

--Agen G.N. Schmitz