Verizon Test

WiMAX Test

Sprint held a happy hour last night to show off the WiMAX launch in here Austin, Texas, so I wandered over for some BBQ and broadband. I want to love WiMAX, but I can’t get excited about the promise of upload speeds of some 400 kilobits per second, which are only a wee bit more than what my Verizon 3G connection delivers. However, on the download side things are decent for a wired network and awesome for a wireless one.

And before any WiMAX boosters despair, I was told that the local 4G network should continue to improve over the next few weeks, which is why I’m holding off on an all-out review. For a sneak peak, check out the experience in the video below. You can see some freezing in the Hulu video stream during the demo; John Taylor, the Sprint spokesman I interviewed, said the location we were in had only two bars of coverage, which may have been the problem. Given the paucity of devices on display for mobile use and the lackluster network quality so far, I’m still thinking the bet that Clearwire (which is powering the 4G part of the Sprint network) and Sprint made on WiMAX is a bad one, but I’m hoping to be proven wrong.

Google is making it easier for deaf, hard-of-hearing and global audiences to enjoy YouTube today, by announcing features that make adding captions to videos much easier.

The first feature uses the same voice-recognition algorithms found in Google Voice along with the YouTube caption system to create auto-captions for videos. A Google blog post announcing the feature warns, “The captions will not always be perfect,” but it’s definitely a good first step.

Additionally, you can automatically translate captions into one of 51 languages, making videos more accessible to a global audience.

The second caption feature is automatic caption timing. This is a slightly more manual process for adding captions to videos, but it’s still very cool. Creators just upload a text file with all the words in a video, and Google figures out when the words are spoken to create the appropriate captions.

An example of both in action is embedded in the video above.

Google says both features will be available in English by the end of this week. Automatic captions will only be visible on select partner channels to start as the company works out the kinks. The auto-timing feature will roll out globally for all English-language vids on YouTube.

I spend an awful lot of time poking around in the App Store in both iTunes and on my iPhone, just in the hopes of finding something new and exciting to download and use on my device. It’s not an ideal situation, and I often wish Apple would throw out its tired model and completely restructure the App Store from the ground up.

There’s little chance of that happening, but a new Facebook app could help make the App Store more navigable, and do so with a little help from your friends. Mplayit is a new service being offered on Facebook that aims to bring some sense to the jungle that is the 100,000-strong App Store using a more intelligent browsing system based on recommendations and demos.

The idea is that there’s no one better to recommend iPhone apps you’d like than your friends. Using Mplayit, friends can make recommendations via the app which will appear on their profile page and in the news feed. That way, you’ll have a trustworthy source when you’re shopping for new software for your device.

By far the most useful aspect of Mplayit during my brief use of it was the app recommendations and shared apps. The rest, including popularity, search and categories, is already available to users via the App Store itself.

I’m not exactly sure how apps get onto the recommended list, since I would assume that they would be the ones which are the most recommended, but then what’s to differentiate them from the shared app? Whatever the methodology behind their selection, the fact remains that they are good picks, and well-deserving of attention. The list provides a good variety, too, covering apps with a range of functions instead of just presenting, say, all the top Twitter apps.

The best part of Mplayit, from the standpoint of people who need to see to believe, is that most apps come complete with videos and images previewing the functionality of the software running on an actual iPhone, and a full text description, too. That’s what puts Mplayit ahead of other iPhone app discovery sites like AppShopper.com or 148apps. Of course, each app also includes buy links that redirect you to the App Store, and a link through which you can add the program to your collection, which helps Mplayit track app popularity and recommendation information.

Many people are reluctant to use Facebook apps because of privacy concerns and fears of spamming the news feeds of friends, but after trying out the service for a little while, I haven’t found any cause for concern with Mplayit. The best part is that you can still use most aspects of the app without granting it access to your profile information.

UPDATED: The next iteration of Flip video cameras will reportedly be WiFi-enabled, allowing users to wirelessly upload their videos. Pocket Lint first broke the news, and CrunchGear claims to have confirmed it. This next-gen Flip will also reportedly have a slide-out screen that reveals the record and menu buttons underneath — the screen will not, however, be a touchscreen. Update: We had a chance to speak with a few Cisco/Flip reps this morning who said they had not confirmed this news and would not comment on any upcoming products.

The addition of Wi-Fi will would be a nice touch for the video camera, and an appropriate marriage with parent company Cisco’s networking tech. (Perhaps the Wi-Fi will even tie into the mysterious forthcoming Flip set-top box.) But the bigger question plaguing the entire Flip line is just how much life is left in a standalone product. Decent video-recording capabilities are being embedded in phones like the Droid, iPhone and iPod Nano. As we learned earlier this year, the video quality of the Nano doesn’t quite match up to the Flip cam yet, but that’s a big yet. Will people want to carry around a dedicated video camera when their phone will do just fine for capturing spontaneous moments?

When we’ve spoken with Flip reps in the past they’ve put on a brave face and said that there is enough room for lots of players in the space, but it’s hard to believe that. With multipurpose devices getting better at shooting video and the high-end HD cameras dropping in price, the better-than-good-but-not-great Flips are getting squeezed out.

I’ve long been looking for a Windows-based Twitter client that can delight me as much as its native Mac counterparts. Too many clients for Windows depend on Adobe AIR, something which isn’t an ideal arrangement, in my opinion. TweetDeck and Seesmic are both powerful tools, but why can’t someone make a Windows-native app that works just as well?

Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run.

Feature-rich

Seesmic for Windows has just about every bell and whistle I could ask for in a professional Twitter client, but without a lot of the unnecessary frills that I feel get thrown in with something like TweetDeck. It seems closer to Tweetie for Mac, which is still my favorite client, independent of platform concerns.

You can use multiple accounts, and customize your columns in the main window however you like. By default, your Home feed will display tweets from all the accounts you have registered with Seesmic, which is a great thing for people who use different Twitter accounts to organize the people they follow, like groups. For those who don’t, Seesmic includes support for Twitter lists, so that you can organize those you follow that way instead.

My personal favorite feature of Seesmic is how the compose window uses your first-entered account by default. That means regardless of what post I reply to, and in what stream I find it, the reply originates from my main account. This is ideal for me because it’s my primary publishing identity, while the others are mostly for monitoring.

Searches can be initiated at any time using a field intuitively placed at the top right-hand corner of the Seesmic window, but I couldn’t find any way to find trending topics. While I don’t generally have cause to check the trends, not having the ability to do so does rankle a bit.

Good-looking and Functional

This is the best-looking Twitter app I’ve seen on Windows, and possibly one of the best-looking Windows apps I’ve seen, period. Especially using a dark-tinted Windows 7 glass visual theme, it just looks designed to fit its surroundings, which is more than I can say for any AIR application.

The tabbed sidebar and light-colored stream backgrounds make it a very usable interface, in addition to helping with aesthetic effect. I would appreciate an option to turn on color-coding for @ mentions or conversations between two people you follow, but with columns designed for the purpose, I guess the Seesmic team figures that isn’t necessary.

Advanced controls for each tweet can be brought up by hovering over a user’s portrait, or by right-clicking on any individual post, so you have options in terms of replying or retweeting. You can also create user lists on the fly from anyone in your stream, or add people to existing lists, which makes it very easy to create functional groups quickly. You can even drag a user’s profile pic to the group of your choice to add them to it.

If there was a feature I’m missing most with Seesmic, it’s the ability to follow/unfollow people from within the client. It’s something I use regularly with my iPhone Twitter clients, and something I enjoy being able to do at a moment’s notice without visiting the web-based interface for Twitter.com.

Client of Choice for Windows

I won’t mince words: Seesmic’s dedicated Windows app has become my go-to software for using Twitter on a PC, even though bugs are present in the preview version. It’s just that good, and it’s not Adobe AIR. In fact, it might be reason enough for me to spend a little less time in OS X, and a little more time working in Windows 7. I’ll stress the might in that last statement, though. If you want a copy, for now you have to sign up for the Seesmic newsletter at Seesmic.com, but turnaround time for a download link seems to be less than a day for most.

Have you tried Seesmic for Windows? Let us know what you think of it below.