• Searching for identity: The G1 obviously integrates the best of Google very well — and it should. Search is part of just about everything the device offers. It’s on the home screen, it’s in the music player, it’s in the maps. It’s quite impressive. Honestly, though, none of the mapping or other Google features bowled me over any more than the integrated Google offerings of the iPhone. (If the G1 offered voice directions, I might have said otherwise.)

• Apps: Compulsive purchasers will have to wait a bit. The Android market offerings are a tad anemic by comparison. But, obviously, developers have had more time to create for the iPhone than for the G1. And, for now, everything there appears to be free. Also, man, some of those babies download fast. I wasn’t even riding on Wi-Fi at the time. (Downloading a video player took a little longer.) There is an app that folks are buzzing about that lets you take a pic of a bar code and have Google dig up details on the item. I can see a use for that, but it’s not enough to completely geek me out.

• Getting your game on: The best thing I found in the store in the game realm was very retro — Pac-Man. While I’m all about nostalgia, Pac-Man was made for a joystick, not a touch screen or accelerometer. Tilting away from angry ghosts really isn’t that much fun. That said, maybe its Spore Origins is still to come. When the iPhone launched in 2007, folks had to wait about a year for any apps to download to their unaltered phones. So, kudos for having any to choose from at the G1’s launch.

• Multimedia: C’mon, the iPhone is an iPod with other cool features that can make phone calls. The G1 is a search tool that plays music and makes phone calls.Transfer of multimedia feels a bit easier to this iTunes-trained user. The iPhone is plug and play; the G1 is drag and drop — that is to say, you have to plug it into either a PC or a Mac, where it shows up as an external drive and you can drag over the music files or folders. I prefer less thinking and activity for my transfers.

• IM/MMS: I’ll say it. I’m totally, completely and blindingly jealous about this. First, instant messaging services such as Yahoo Messenger and AIM can run in the background, as on the BlackBerry, without having to reconnect every time you leave the app to do something else like check e-mail or answer a call. And G1 lets users send multimedia messages via MMS. Any basic cellphone these days can do that, but not the iPhone. (This difference did elicit a mostly silent growl from me.)

• Ringtones: The ease of setting ringtones on the G1 is almost enough to make an iPhone owner throw up her hands and think about converting. Pick a song, any song on your phone, and make it your ringtone. Yeah, it should be that easy — and it is on the G1. (Again, grrrrr! I had to buy a separate program to do this easily — or convert the files in my iTunes library and sprinkle pixie dust over them. Too many steps for the maker of the iPod.)

• Keyboard: OK, this one’s for the FWF — friends with fingernails. There’s a Sidekick-style keyboard that pops out, making typing a tad easier out of the box. But there’s a price for this convenience. The only way you can enter info is by using that keyboard — and it has to be in the landscape mode. And, frankly, my thumb is still crazy sore from playing around with the device. Why? The right thumb has to reach over a fixed set of navigational buttons that are well placed in portrait mode but get in the way in landscape.

• Of portraits and landscapes: Here was something that drove me a little nuts. I want to look at the screen the way I want to look at the screen — not the way the device insists I do. The G1 won’t let you flip back and forth unless you open and close the keyboard. Again, you can enter text only in landscape and only by opening the keyboard. I kept touching the screen, hoping to just be able to tap in anything. Tap, tap, tap — alas, nothing.

Ultimately, it’s a tale of two smartly developed smartphones: One created by the search-and-information behemoth (Google), the other by the master of multimedia (Apple).

Pick your preference.

So far, I feel smart enough with what I have (don’t worry, my precious). But I did get my geek fix from the G1.

– Michelle Maltais

Maltais is editorial broadcast manager for the Los Angeles Times.

SOURCE

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How iView the G1: An iPhone owner?s take on the Google phone

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At the Convergence 2008 conference on automotive electronics yesterday, BMW revealed it is looking for partners as it pursues an open-source car computing platform. The German company is enthusiastic about the potential for such an open-source system’s potential to keep up with the rapid advances in technology and features in the multimedia and digital entertainment areas.

Though no other car makers are yet officially on board, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and Honda have previously participated in a panel on the subject, reports Automotive News. BMW said it wants to have an open-source system in a vehicle selling 200,000 or more units over the next five to seven years.

The newly revealed tie-up with Mercedes-Benz could make cooperation on this front likely as well, since whatever software is chosen will need a specific set of hardware to ensure compatibility – and hardware purchasing is the nature of the BMW-Mercedes agreement. “We were convinced we had to develop an open platform that would allow for open software since the speed in the infotainment and entertainment industry requires us to be on a much faster track,” said Gunter Reichart, BMW vice president of driver assistance, body electronics and electrical networks. “We invite other OEMs to join with us, to exchange with us. We are open to exchange with others.”

This spirit of openness and willingness to share and expand technology is a marked turnaround in the corporate car culture, especially between historical rivals like BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Whether it’s simply a marriage of convenience or a sign of the truly difficult times facing the industry, it’s no less remarkable for its magnitude.

GM is also considering whether to go open source or to keep seeking proprietary solutions. “This is a decision we will make in the next six to 12 months. It’s a great opportunity for us. I think this can really advance a lot of software development and bring a lot of innovation to the vehicle,” said Chris Thibodeau, GM’s director of global technology engineering for electrical/electronics products. Said Chris Thibodeau, GM’s global director of technology engineering for electrical and electronics products. No discussion of cooperating directly with BMW has yet been made, but since an open source project can be contributed to by essentially anyone, once a platform was established, carmakers could cooperate at will as long as they managed to abide by whatever licensing restrictions apply.

Several other carmakers, including Chrysler, Ford and Honda expressed interest in developing the idea of an open-source platform further. Honda’s Toyohei Nakajima, senior engineer at Honda R&D said, “We also need to make sure who will be responsible for such an open system architecture. Maybe we need to learn more about that from BMW.”

BMW’s ConnectedDrive system is currently deployed in many of its models, and offers an integration with the in-car iDrive computing system and access to the Internet from the road.

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Android is now available as open source

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Android is now available as open source

Intel on Monday showed off a prototype handheld based on Moorestown, its upcoming Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform designed to enable a new generation of ultra-thin, touchscreen devices with extensive battery life.

Presenting at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, Intel vice president Anand Chandrasekher said Moorestown will consist of a system-on-a-chip (SOC), codenamed “Lincroft,” which integrates a 45nm processor, graphics, memory controller and video encode/decode onto a single part.

The chip will connect to a southbridge I/O hub codenamed “Langwell”, which supports a range of I/O ports to connect with wireless, storage, and display components in addition to incorporating several board level functions.

When it arrives sometime in the 2009-2010 time, the Moorestown platform will introduce a more than tenfold reduction in idle power consumption when compared to Intel’s first-generation MIDs based on the Intel Atom processor, Chandrasekher said.

Intel is targeting Moorestown at the smartphone space, claiming the technology will serve as a catalyst for new developments that will extend the full Internet experience into into a new generation of handsets with advanced wireless communications.

The platform will support a range of wireless technologies including 3G, WiMAX, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and mobile TV. Chandrasekher said Intel is collaborating with both Ericsson and Option on new 3G HSPA data modules that will come in 25×30×2.x mm small size and provide an “always connected” Internet-based experience.

In the videos below, the Intel exec can bee seen demonstrating the first working Moorestown-based handheld, which Engadget claims is “little more than a validation board running fresh from the factory, three-dayold Moorestown silicon in an Intel lab.” A similar device had been flaunted by the chipmaker in recent years, though those versions are said to have been non-functional mockups.

At one point, it was reported that Apple would embrace Intel’s MID platform as the foundation for its own next-generation mobile Internet device, sometimes referred to as a next-generation Newton handheld or Internet tablet.

Intel’s vision of a next-generation mobile Internet device looks something like this.

However, the company’s recent acquisition of chip designer PA Semi to build proprietary ARM chips for iPhones and iPods may signal a change of direction on the part of the electronics maker.

SOURCE

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Intel shows off working Moorestown MID device

Photo: Getty Images; Illustration: Angelos Dosoulas

As the wireless world awaits the Oct. 22 debut of the first phone based on the Google-backed Android software, engineers at Motorola (MOT) are hard at work on their own Android handset. Motorola’s version will boast an iPhone-like touch screen, a slide-out qwerty keyboard, and a host of social-network-friendly features, BusinessWeek.com has learned.

Motorola has been showing spec sheets and images of the phone to carriers around the world in the past two months and is likely to introduce the handset in the U.S. sometime in the second quarter of 2009, according to people familiar with Motorola’s plans. Building a phone based on the highly anticipated Android operating system is part of Motorola’s effort to revive a loss-making handset division that has forfeited market share amid a drought of bestselling phones. Motorola stock, which on Oct. 17 rose a penny to 5.62, is hovering near a 16-year low.

The phone will appear among a new class of social smartphones designed to make it easy for users to connect quickly and easily to mobile social networks such as Facebook and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace (BusinessWeek, 10/10/08). Such phones let users message in-network friends directly from phone contact lists, for example. A Facebook representative declined to comment on the company’s work with Motorola. MySpace.com didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Motorola declined to elaborate on its plans, but said in a statement: “We’re excited about the innovation possibilities on Android and look forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google (GOOG)” and the community of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance that are working on the Android operating system.

Mobile Networking Wave

In the next year, social networking phones are expected to be a hit with the 16- to 34-year-old crowd, analysts say. According to consultancy Informa (INF), the number of mobile social-networking users will rise from 2.3% of global cell-phone users at the end of 2007 to as many as 23% of all mobile users by the end of 2012.

The Android handset will feature a touch screen about the size of those on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, people familiar with the phone say. While it takes some of the design cues from Krave ZN4, the first touch-screen phone from Motorola launched with Verizon Wireless on Oct. 14, it’s not certain whether the Android phone screen will feature Krave’s distinctive and interactive clear flip screen.

Like the world’s first Android phone, from HTC, Motorola’s Android-based device will offer a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. People who’ve seen the pictures and spec sheets for the device say it looks like a higher-end version of the HTC phone, called the T-Mobile G1. But it’s expected to sell for less, at prices similar to the Krave, which is available for $150 with a two-year contract. After carrier subsidies, the G1 will retail for $180 with a two-year contract.

Slow Off the Mark

Motorola’s new phone likely won’t be ready to launch in the U.S.

until the second quarter of next year, say people who are familiar with it. And it may not be available in Europe until the third quarter of 2009. Many analysts have been expecting Motorola to roll out an Android phone in December or January.

Any delay gives competing Android phones a chance to gain traction. London-based INQ will unveil its social-networking phone, INQ1, in Britain and Australia in about a month (BusinessWeek, 10/09/08). The slider phone, which integrates Facebook features into its address book and camera, is expected to enter the U.S. market next year. And Nokia (NOK), the world’s largest cell-phone maker, has already begun adding connectivity to its media-sharing site Ovi in some of its higher-end phones. “The sooner [Motorola] comes out with a social phone the better,” says John Jackson, an analyst with the Yankee Group. “The more you wait, the more distance gets put between you and the rest of the world.”

In the handset business, a best-selling product can reverse a company’s fortunes quickly, as Motorola has seen first with its popular StarTAC, and then with the Razr line of devices. “Motorola still has global carrier and distribution relationships” to rival those of most competing players, says Jackson. Motorola also has a relationship with industry innovator Apple, and may be able to offer iTunes downloads for upcoming phones, says Moe Tanabian, principal at researcher IBB Consulting. Music downloads may appeal to the same category of consumers that is expected to buy social phones.

Good People

The Android project is getting a lot of attention and support directly from Motorola’s new co-chief executive officer, Sanjay Jha. The Android phone—likely one of a series of Android handsets Motorola is cooking up—is the brainchild of people who joined Motorola via its 2006 acquisition of Good Technology. Good specialized in enterprise wireless messaging, data access, and security software used in such products as Motorola’s Q line of smartphones. The project is headed by Rick Osterloh, vice-president and general manager for Android products and formerly Good’s vice-president of marketing and product management.

Motorola is looking to add staff to its Android project in California, where the Good team is based. Applicants are invited to work on a “social smart phone.” One posting for a software engineer on job board Monster.com reads: “We are a new start-up division within Motorola with strong executive level sponsorship, a 50M+ budget for our Android platform. Our new CEO, Sanjay Jha, has been in the forefront of the formation of the Android Open Handset Alliance!”

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

SOURCE

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Motorola Readies Its Own Android Social Smartphone

Oh yeah! Its finally out in Sweden! Enjoy the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 unboxing pictures!

About Sony Ericsson Xperia

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is an arc slider mobile phone delivering a premium, converged mobile experience addressing web communication and multimedia entertainment.

The XPERIA X1 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1, an open platform and applications designed for X1 will run on other Windows Mobile 6.1 devices with the same screen resolution and hardware features. The XPERIA X1 combines a 800×480 pixel WVGA touchscreen, a wide-pitch full QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, A-GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera and 400MB user free memory in a quality metal-finish body. The Java ME Platform is also supported with CLDC 1.1, MIDP 2.0 and other JSRs.

Exclusive to Sony Ericsson, the XPERIA panel user interface on the desktop gives access to different options using finger-tip navigation and is configurable by the end-user. The XPERIA X1 seamlessly integrates interaction between the touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, 4-way key and optical joystick.

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Unboxing Pictures: Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

In the midst of the financial meltdown and a contentious upcoming election, you might think the U.S. government and taxpayers are just funding wars, bank bailouts, and bridges to nowhere or somewhere. But this is the same government that funded the Internet way back when and is also funding the next generation of technologies that will make the current Internet seem like a Model-T.

Over the last several years, the U.S. government–via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grants–has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in PAL, an acronym for “Personalized Assistant that Learns.” Smarter software and networks and augmenting human intelligence are useful in times of war and peace.

As part of the PAL project, more than $200 million of DARPA money has been poured into CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) over the last five years. CALO has been run out of SRI International with the assistance of 25 research organizations and 400 researchers.

Several companies, including Radar Networks, Farecast (acquired by Microsoft) and Adapx, have been spun out of SRI based on some facet of CALO technology. The latest, Siri, was founded in December last year and has raised $8.5 million in series A funding from Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.At this point, Siri’s management is being secretive about what the company is developing. The elevator pitch goes something like, “Users’ online lives are becoming more complicated and getting out of control for mainstream users. What if there was an easy way for normal users (non-power users) to ask the Internet to help them.”

According to the Siri PR pitch, the product is “a new interaction paradigm for the consumer Internet experience that applies intelligence at the interface.” The company expects to release a beta version of its initial product in the first half of 2009, according to Dag Kittlaus, a former Telenor Mobile and Motorola executive who is a co-founder and CEO of the company.

“We have to be careful at this stage,” Kittlaus told me. “We don’t like to play these games, but we need to keep a tight lid on what we are specifically doing. We have some original ideas of what the product is going to do, but we don’t want to spark ideas among potential competitors.” Those competitors would likely be masters of the Internet with large Internet footprints and research prowess like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Kittlaus did allow that Siri has more than a dozen partners, presumably large, well-established distribution players that can help build a consumer market for Siri’s product. Unlike most Web start-ups, Siri has a business model, Kittlaus claimed. “We have good business models, both existing and emerging. We think CPA (cost per action) is the future, and this specific application is good for CPA and we are partnering on that.”

He also touted the pedigree of the company’s current cadre of 19 employees. “They are mostly engineers from Yahoo, Google, SRI, NASA, and Xerox PARC,” he said. The chief architect of the CALO project, Adam Cheyer is a co-founder and vice president of engineering at Siri, and Tom Gruber, a well-known artificial intelligence and semantic Web expert, is a co-founder and CTO.

Cheyer described CALO as superset of what Siri is developing. “The CALO project is building an automated assistant to help manage and improve your life. The technology spans all aspects of interaction–natural language processing, speech recognition, and planning and reasoning capabilities–and interfaces with all kinds of systems, such as email and contacts,” he said.

(Credit: SRI International)

“Learning in the wild is core focus,” he continued. “We want it to improve over time and learn from users with no coaching and without changing any code. We are taking the key elements from the project to commercialize it in a form that will delight users. We are not building systems that do things but that learn how to do things.”

CALO sounds like a representation of the famous Apple Knowledge Navigator video from 1987.

“Siri is a subset of that concept,” Cheyer said. “We have to keep in mind existing user behavior. It will feel like something close to what people use a lot. We will add speech recognition and other features as we go. We don’t want to take such a leap that people cannot identify with it. We’ll do things similar to but more advanced than what we do now. The longer term vision is the Knowledge Navigator, although it is an early chapter now and it might look different than that.”

According to Gruber, intelligence at the interface allows the computers to make recommendations, like a personal assistant:

The interfaces we use to interact with the world’s information are getting smarter. Web portals gave us someone else’s idea of the content we should see. Then came search engines, which let us tell the system what we want, one query at a time. We are about to see the next wave — intelligence at the interface — in which the system knows about us, our information, and our physical environment. With knowledge about our context, an intelligent system can make recommendations and act on our behalf.

(Credit: Tom Gruber)

Siri may be working on more intelligent Web interfaces that can make inferences based a wide variety of user activities (the “lifestream”), learning over time on its own, and then taking actions on behalf of users. For example, if you are booking travel or looking for a restaurant, Siri would know your preferences and about travel sites or restaurants, integrating data and context from multiple sources to deliver personal assistance. This could be especially useful in mobile scenarios where you don’t want to wade through pages of search results or deal with complex interactions.

Tom Gruber: “If we want our technology to have world-changing impact, bring it to the interface: get useful knowledge from all those intelligent people on the Internet give the benefit of this knowledge to everyone. “

(Credit: Tom Gruber)

We’ll have to wait for next year, if the company stays on schedule, to see whether Siri can really define a new paradigm for experiencing the Web.

SOURCE

Originally posted here:
Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm

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Google System

The new MacBook and MacBook Pro are here. No, not just “here” in the sense of “publicly acknowledged by Apple and being shipped to arrive in Apple Stores tomorrow.” Here in the sense of, in my office right now. So in advance of our full reviews and lab tests of these products, let me give you a quick tour of the products.

The look

The big physical differences between the MacBook Pro and MacBook lines are gone with this update. The MacBook looks like a 13-inch version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Both of them have the aluminum enclosure and a black screen covered from end to end with glass. Both have the same black keyboard found in the MacBook Air. Both of them are curvy around the sides and bottom, making them easy to grip.

Basically they both look like the bigger brothers of the MacBook Air. The Air was clearly the first product in a wave of new laptop designs from Apple, and now we’ve seen the second and third versions. They feel rigid and sturdy, despite their light weight.

Display matters

At first glance, the screens of both models appear to be quite similar—and similar to the MacBook Air’s as well. The LED backlighting is remarkably bright, meaning these laptops are going to be quite usable, even in very bright conditions.

Users who are fans of the matte finish on the MacBook Pro are going to be quite disappointed about these new systems’ standardization, iMac style, on a glossy glass-covered display. In my extensive time with the MacBook Air over the past few months, I’ve found that the bright LED-lit screen could overpower just about every bright, glaring location you could think of.

However, since the displays are a single span of glass, there’s an easy solution for fans of anti-glare-coated displays: if they don’t already, companies will no doubt begin to make screen protectors, like those already available for the iPhone, that you can apply to your display in order to remove the shine and return an old-school matte finish. Yeah, it’ll be more work and more cost, but it’s not as if there isn’t an option out there if you just can’t stand the glossy look. (Me, I love it.)

The sound

The MacBook Pro’s prominent speaker grille holes on both sides of its keyboard are now much smaller, owing to Apple’s new production process. And the MacBook continues to have its stereo speakers embedded right next to the display’s hinge, so that the sound can bounce off the screen. So far as I can tell, the speakers are more or less the same as in past generations.

The ports

The MacBook Pro, which previously offered most of its ports on its left side—but with a few ports on the right—has joined the MacBook in offering ports on only one side.

Both models use the same MagSafe connector found in previous generations; unlike the MacBook Air, which sports a redesigned power adapter due to its unique shape, these models appear to use the same adapters as they did before. The MacBook Pro comes with a larger, 85-watt adapter; the MacBook comes with a smaller 60-watt adapter.

Both offer an Ethernet port, two USB 2 ports, audio in and out, and the new Mini DisplayPort monitor port. (DisplayPort is an emerging display-connectivity standard; it’s unclear if Apple’s the first company to offer the “mini” version of DisplayPort, and if it’s an Apple-invented proprietary variation or if it’s something we’ll see in many other computers and displays to come.) Apple says there will be Mini Display Port-to-DVI and Mini-Display-Port-to-VGA adapters available; it’s unclear if support for composite and S-Video connections has been dropped with these systems.

In addition to the ports shared by the two systems, the MacBook Pro offers a single FireWire 800 port (yes, you can buy a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 adapter) and an ExpressCard slot hidden behind an aluminum door. Both models offer a slot-loading SuperDrive on the right side. (Previously the MacBook Pro’s slot was on the front.) Yes, this means that the new MacBook joins the MacBook Air in not offering any sort of FireWire connectivity.

The trackpad

Two new preference panes. Note the compact-fluorescent bulb.

One of the most ballyhooed new features of these MacBooks is the new clickable glass trackpad. So, about that button. Longtime users of Apple laptops will find it quite a bit disconcerting to reach below the trackpad with their thumbs, only to find no button there. However, it’s a pretty easy step to just slide your hand up on the trackpad so that you continue to point with one finger and click on the pad with your thumb. The trackpad is smart enough not to get confused by the presence of a finger and a thumb on the trackpad. And of course, those who are adventurous will get used to pressing with their index finger as they mouse around, giving their thumbs a break. (For clicking and dragging, you’ll basically still need two fingers.)

The new trackpad looks pretty much like the old trackpad. It’s painted the same color as the MacBook’s aluminum body. But it’s smoother than an old-style Apple trackpad. The sensation of moving your fingers across it is a little disconcerting; there’s friction but not a lot of texture. It definitely doesn’t feel like you’re running your finger across a pane of glass, though that’s what it is.

With the new trackpad come a new set of supported multi-finger gestures, all configured via the new Trackpad preference pane. The gestures supported by the past generation of laptops are still there, including two-finger scrolling, pinching and spreading fingers to zoom in and out, and swiping three fingers to navigate forward and back.

The new Trackpad control panel.

But the new trackpad has a few new tricks up its sleeve. You can program either the bottom right or left corner of the trackpad to act as a secondary mouse button. In other words, if you click in the bottom corner of the trackpad, it can be registered as a right-click. So the no-button laptop can act as a two-button laptop after all. (There’s no support for any additional button mappings, however.)

The laptops’ new four-finger gestures are built into the system and can’t be customized, but they’re still pretty cool. Place four fingers on the trackpad and flick them up, and Expose hides all your windows and exposes the desktop. Flick down with the same four fingers, and Expose shows all windows. Swipe left or right and the application switcher appears.

The weight

At 4.5 pounds, the new MacBook is half a pound lighter than the old version. With its new complement of previously-Pro-only features and its lighter weight, people who have been considering the MacBook Air will probably want to give that purchase some more consideration. The new MacBook isn’t close to the three-pound Air on weight, but it’s noticeably lighter than its predecessor and it’s cheaper and faster than the Air. As a MacBook Air user, I will have to seriously consider switching back to the MacBook now that it’s gained these new features and lightened its load by half a pound.

The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is two-tenths of a pound heavier than its predecessor. In practice you probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but the Pro definitely didn’t go on the same diet as the MacBook.

The graphics

The new MacBook Pro has two separate graphics subsystems inside of it. One, the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, is the same one found in the new MacBook and MacBook Air models. It’s less powerful—and uses less power. The other, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT, is a much faster, higher-performance graphics processor. To choose which one you use, you must go to the Energy Saver preference pane, fresh with its new icon. (The Energy Saver icon used to be an incandescent light bulb; Apple has replaced it with a compact fluorescent as a part of its quest to reduce the energy consumption of its icons.)

Within the Energy Saver preference pane, you can choose between “Better battery life” (the 9400M) and “Higher performance” (the 9600M GT) for graphics. However, this isn’t a switch you can do on the fly—nor can you set the system to use one when you’re on battery power and the other when you’re attached to an outlet. In fact, to switch between the two cards requires you to log out of your user account and log back in.

iPhone headphones

Yes, it’s true—these new MacBooks work with your iPhone headphones. If you click the button on your iPhone headphones, iTunes pauses. Click again, and the music resumes. A double-click advances one track, and a triple-click moves back a track—just like on the iPhone. What’s more, the headphones’ built-in microphone appears as the input device “Microphone port” in the Sound preference pane.

The keyboard

Both models use the same keyboard, the one that debuted on the MacBook and then made its way to the MacBook Air. If you love it—or hate it—you probably already know. As for me, I find the feel identical to other recent Apple laptops, even though the look is a bit different.

Migration and Target Disk Mode

The new MacBook, like the MacBook Air, lacks a FireWire port entirely. What this means is that the old laptop data-transfer standby known as Target Disk Mode—enabled by holding down the T key upon startup, allowing your laptop’s hard drive to appear as an external hard drive when plugged in to another computer—is gone. And there’s no USB equivalent of Target Disk Mode. What this means is, if you’re using Apple’s Migration Assistant to move your data to the new MacBook, you’ll have to transfer your data over the network from your other computer. (The fastest solution: attach via an Ethernet cable and do it direct at full speed.)

Look out below!

When the original MacBook came out, one of my favorite features was the easy access it provided to its hard drive and RAM, both of which lurked behind a few screws under the laptop’s battery bay. Sadly, the MacBook Pro remained extremely hard to upgrade—until now. These are the most upgradeable Apple laptops yet.

Both models are identical in this respect. On the bottom side of the computer there’s a switch you flip up, which releases a metal door.

Lift it off, and beneath you’ll find a battery and a hard drive.

To remove the battery, just pull up on the plastic tab attached to it and it’ll lift right out. To remove the hard drive, you’ll need a small Phillips screwdriver in order to remove a single screw from a small plastic locking mechanism that sits between the main laptop case and the drive. Then lift the drive out and disconnect it from the drive cable.

Reaching the RAM’s a bit more involved: you need to use that same screwdriver to remove eight screws at the top and bottom of the undershell of the MacBook case. The entire bottom shell lifts off, and you’ll see two RAM slots right above the battery bay, dead center. (The MacBooks both have two SO-DIMM slots for a maximum RAM total of 4GB.)

An important note about the battery: it no longer comes with its own battery-level light. (Which would be tricky, since it’s hidden behind the removable door.) Instead, on the left side of both models there’s a small button that you press to see the capacity of the currently inserted battery. You’ll get a more detailed look than in previous models, too: eight tiny battery lights make up the battery-status display.

Color schemes

It’s worth noting that while the old MacBook line (still kicking around as a $999 low-end MacBook) let you choose between white and black models, with these new MacBooks you can have any color you like, so long as it’s silver. However, in line with the latest iMac models, it’s a definite silver-and-black look, thanks to the keyboard and the solid black glass face of the display. Even the display’s hinge is black, as opposed to the gray found in the Macbook Air.

Out of the box

Not five minutes out of the box and already a software update.

Apple crows about the reduced waste in the packaging of these products, and it’s true. They follow the MacBook Air approach: it’s a tiny box with not a whole lot in it. (Not even any video adapters.) But it’s definitely less wasteful packaging.

Once I got the computers out of the box, I was immediately slapped with a Software Update notice. Between the installation of software on the systems at the factory in China and their arrival in the United States, Apple’s software engineers evidently fixed some bugs. I was immediately prompted with an alert to update to Version 1.2 of the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update for “precision aluminum unibody enclosure MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers.” Whew!

First impressions

After a few hours with these systems, I have to say that I like them a lot. The new trackpad takes some getting used to, but I think most users will like it. Lovers of matte displays will be angry, though that anger might be mitigated by third-party anti-glare overlays. And the displays themselves are bright and beautiful, which is a good thing. The new graphics performance of these systems—especially the MacBook, which previously used Intel’s integrated graphics—should be good, though we’ll have to wait for Macworld Lab to weigh in to know for sure.

Thus ends my rapid-fire hands-on look of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Stay tuned later this week for Macworld Lab’s tests of these systems, followed by complete reviews. And when the new MacBook Air arrives in November, we’ll take that one for a spin as well.

Jason Snell is Macworld’s editorial director. You can follow him on Twitter. Jason thanks the good folks on Twitter for suggesting so many of the questions he answered in this story.

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First Look: MacBook and MacBook Pro

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Finally! Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results

Google Puts Tunes From YouTube a Click Away

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Google Puts Tunes From YouTube a Click Away

Wordpress 2.7 is the Real Deal

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CBS Labs has rolled out a labs version of a new product called Social Viewing Room, you pick a live show and chat about it with others.

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CBS : Social Viewing Room

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Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched an iPhone application on Thursday that turns the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool.

The most notable feature “organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out and make an impact quickly,” according to the software.

On my phone, the application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California.

The application anonymously reports back the number of calls made this way: “Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously.”

The software is the latest effort by politicians to capitalize on technology, joining other examples such as ads distributed through YouTube, Web-based fund-raising, Facebook pages and fan groups, and e-mail recruitment drives.

The Obama for America iPhone application is available for download through Apple’s iTunes store, said Raven Zachary, an iPhone consultant who’s directing the launch effort.

A “get involved” feature uses the phone’s GPS-based location sensing to find the nearest Obama campaign headquarters, and “local events” likewise pulls up a list of activities sorted by proximity.

A “media” section provides links to video and photos, but beware: YouTube showed errors following some of the links. Perhaps the newer videos hadn’t been prepared for iPhone display yet.

The application also shows Obama statements to the news media and a guide to Obama’s positions on various issues.

Update 8:50 a.m. PDT: The application shows how many calls have been made nationwide and how many you made. Those statistics are the kind that can motivate people–they can feel like they’re part of something bigger. That may sound a bit silly as a motivational tool, but consider that Smule’s Sonic Lighter application for the iPhone is popular, despite the fact that it costs 99 cents more than its free competition, likely because people can see where else on the globe people are using it and because the longer you run the application, the bigger your own spot on the map becomes. It’s a kind of competition.

Update 9:28 a.m. PDT: The campaign added an Obama iPhone app Web site, too.

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Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool

LeWeb’08 Program

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