Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Welcome to this week’s Who’s on Crack where we delve into what appears to be narcotic-induced moves in the tech world.  This week, we’ll get as far as looking up info on a facility upstate for:

• Zune HD launches without an app store
• Look at Bing
• NYT wants into your computer
• iPhone accessories must stop

Microsoft decides it can’t compete with iPod, so it doesn’t

With all those “there’s an app for that” commercials that Apple seems to run around the clock, we would have to assume MS doesn’t watch TV.  MS launched the new Zune HD to almost no fanfare this week.  Interestingly, the new Zune HD isn’t going to be focused on apps.  It is focused on the music, dude.

Really?  And then your response is “Well, that’s not my job, that’s what the Windows Mobile is doing.”  Really, MS?  Can the Zune run Windows Mobile apps?  Did you not say this as you wouldn’t want it to seem like Windows Mobile team is dragging their feet in getting this deal together?  Then why launch now?

Even if you disagree that the rock is flowing up in Redmond consider this: the Zune HD doesn’t display video in HD.  It’s called that for HD radio.  You know, the super-awesome feature that features music ID.  The bonehead station near me displays “Everlong - Foo Fighters” for the next hour, no matter who is playing.  Genius.  And my dial up connect is broadband (there is a rubber band on my modem that has a picture of Betty Boop, ergo a “broad band”).  How do these ideas make it out of the Men’s room?

Bing goes visual

Awesome.  Forget text with its precise keywords and such, images are worth a thousand words, right?  Well, not so much when it comes to search engines as Bing launched its new visual search this week.  Our Shawn Ingram explains: “the idea of visual search is that users, when searching for terms, rather than seeing lines of text will see images of what they’re searching for.  Those images can then be sorted to refine the search.  For example, searching HDTVs will show images of all different HDTVs, while on the sidebar there are options to limit the search by brand, price, size, resolution, etc.”

Hmm.  OK, so in searching for a HDTV, the first step is to show me some pictures of black rectangles?  Fantastic help, Bing-o!  That is why you are beating the pants off Google, your black rectangle concept is the new black.  How did Google miss this?  Oh, wait, they didn’t; they’ve had this for sometime.  What?  The Bing layout is pretty much a copy of the Google layout?  I am sure that won’t help them confuse the experience with Google.  Hold up, how is Bing even still alive at this point?  What’s next week, the intro of BMail? Bdocs?  Bing Maps?  Come on, we are not fooled.

NYT hosts malicious ads

It used to be you had be hanging out in all the bad places on the net to get some malicious stuff on your computer.  Not so much anymore, in fact, places like the New York Times have become the latest victim of serving up poisoned ads.  Our Sue Walsh had this to say,

It is not yet clear how the malicious ads ended up on the site, but it’s likely it was either unwittingly served by one of the ad networks the Times uses (it’s a fairly common scammer technique to pose as a legit advertiser, join an ad network and then poison it with a rogue ad which it will then serve to all the other sites in its network.).  Aside from the warning it posted, the Times had had no comment about the matter.

As if the newspaper didn’t have enough trouble or was this more?  Was this a way for the newspaper to try to find a new income source?  I mean, if subscribers are not paying the bill, advertising fell out of the bottom, pay walls are not working, have not we driven them to trying to get paid by spammers and scareware folks?  I am not saying NYT was on the take from these guys, but really, what other way to make money do they have?  Color me unsurprised.

iPhone accessorie ad infinitum

Today in my mailbox came a press release about a pink stylus for the iPhone.  Wrong freakin’ guy to send this too.  I’ll assume it’s pink for the ladies, because as geeks, we’ve no idea how to cater to women, except to color it pink.  Awesome, but it gets better.

Stylus?  We all left Windows Mobile, so enough with the stylus.  It was cool back in the late 90s but today, it is just silly.  Yes, there are folks out there (not just women, thank you very much) who have long fingernails and the iPhone’s capacitive screen presents some challenges.  But much like the cocaine craze of the late 80s (thank you, Don Johnson), you trim a nail for this purpose and move on with life.  You don’t go sourcing a stylus to solve this.

Then there is this story over at Appletell, which I read all the time, about a keyboard that slips over the iPhone so you can have tactile buttons.  Bill Stiteler starts off with: “There are some people who hate the iPhone’s virtual keyboard: especially those who are more familiar with the Blackberry.” 

My advice for those folks: Don’t get a frickin’ iPhone!  Can you imagine the fun of sliding your phone in and out of this just to perform basic things on the phone?  It would be enough to justify mental duress.  If you need buttons, get a device with buttons.  Stop giving companies the idea that you’ll buy something like this $30 waste of everyone’s time.  The company surely can make something that addresses a real problem, not the 3.67% of you that want your iPhone to do something different.

Please stop making this stuff, Bill can write about other things, I promise.