(via Gizmodo)

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News broke last week that Google would be adding voice search capabilities to the iPhone and the app is now appearing in the iTunes AppStore. I gave it a download earlier this morning but want to clarify one bit. The application isn’t a standalone app that solely provides voice search capabilities. You’ll want to download the Google Mobile App, which is the suite of Google Apps that includes: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Reader, GOOG-411, News, Notebook, Photos, orkut, Translate, Maps, YouTube, and Google Earth.

I tested around a dozen voice searches with the app and came away pretty impressed in terms of usage and accuracy.

There’s no need to press a button to initiate the voice search asthe app can be configured to use the iPhone’s motion sensor to initiatelistening. It’s the same sensor that turns the display off when you’reon a call so that you don’t accidentally disconnect a call using yourcheek. You just hold up the phone and once the motion sensor detectsyour face, you’ll hear a beep. Speak your search and that’s it.Although I think the use of the motion sensor is clever, you do have tohave the application running… which means that in a sense, you dohave to press a button to get things going.

Regardless of that limitation, it’s a great implementation of voicesearch. I usually search for our site as a test simply because"jkontherun" isn’t a common word and voice engines usally turn it intosomething funky like "salmon run" or "chickamuaga" for some reason.Google’s voice search didn’t fare all that much better until I sloweddown my speech ever so slightly. When I did that, it returned "jk onthe run" in the search box and of course returned the proper searchresults.

Once a search is returned, you can interact with the results as you would normally. If you press the little magnifying glass icon next to the search term, you get options for where to search: iPhone and Web, Maps, Images, News, Shopping, and Wikipedia.

The iPhone and Web option caught my attention simply because it’s not just "Web". It looks like there is or will be some way to search your iPhone for data. In fact, in the configuration settings under Searchable Items, I see an option for Contacts, but I never received any contact results when searching for someone by name. At first, I though that Contacts refers to Google Contacts and not local iPhone contacts, but Google says that it’s searching your address book. I take that to mean my local address book.

Since a voice search didn’t work for any contacts, I began to type "James Kendrick". The app’s auto-suggest started to populate results with contacts on my phone and even shows an icon to tell me that these are contact results and not web results.

All in all, pretty nifty and if you allow the app to use yourlocation, it provides localized search results when it can using the My Location feature. Note thatin the settings you can turn screen rotation on, but it’s set to off bydefault. Setting it to an "on" position disables the motion sensingused for voice search. Google has made this to be slick and effective tool. And it’s free.

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The source code is available so if you have a G1 and webserver that controls your garage door, you’re in business! I’ve been looking into home automation for a bit now and I’d love to have some type of "proximity detector" on my phone for things like this. You know… something that starts the coffee when I come downstairs in the morning. Maybe have the stereo start up to my favorite tunes when I sit in my comfy chair. Something to put the seat down when I leave the…uh… well, you know… everyday kind of things. ;)

(via Hackszine)

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Like the USB727 I use today, the new USB760 includes a microSD slot that supports cards up to 8GB in capacity. I find that this slot comes in handy when pairing the USB adapter with a netbook or other device that has a card reader, but doesn’t natively support the small microSD cards without some type of adapter. The device also includes the drivers and software for both Windows PCs and Macs running OS X, so you don’t need to carry around an installation CD.

The USB760 will set you back $99 from Verizon Wireless after rebate and with a qualifying data plan commitment. I’d be extremely curious how a 3G adapter this small captures a signal… the smaller these get, the better the antenna likely needs to be.

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Giveaway of the Day is featuring a Windows application launcher today and normally, I’d skip this type of utility over. What caught my eye though is that the software brings up your customized application list through a mouse gesture. I presume it would work with a Tablet PC and pen and/or a quick touch gesture on a touchscreen device as well. It looks simple to use and it’s free today only so if you need a diversion as we start the work-week, this could be a good one for a few minutes. You’ll need a Windows XP or Vista machine for the 6.21MB download.

Here’s how the Mouse Gesture Application Launcher works: you record a mouse gesture in the application. Any time you replicate that gesture on your desktop, an application launcher with up to ten of your program or folder shortcuts appears and you just tap or click on what you need. Sure you could just put the shortcuts on your Desktop, but who likes a cluttered Desktop? Besides, this makes for a good party-trick and conversation starter. ;)

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Road trip!  That started the week where we saw a lot of tech news that was exciting.  Here are the top stories on jkOnTheRun in case you missed them:

• First impressions of the Telenav Shotgun GPS
• What a great community!… thanks for the wedding wishes
• Three reasons the iPhone has topped the RAZR
• jkOnTheRun video- Telenav Shotgun GPS
• MobileTechRoundup hits the UK
• Netbook, notebook, portable, ultra-portable: what’s in a name?
• InfoWorld, Windows 7 and benchmarks: a trio of trouble
• How much will Microsoft charge for Windows 7 on netbooks?
• It’s official: Blackberry Storm available November 21 by Verizon
• MobileTechRoundup #154: a (Telenav) Shotgun wedding
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone in da house!
• This week at Mobile Tech Manor #16- stretch limos and WaWa
• Crapware on phones- growing trend
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic- first thoughts on touch
• Why would anyone buy a MacBook Air?

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Some Black Friday deals are already trickling out on netbooks and we’re hearing that Apple will continue their tradition of holiday discounts as well. [I'll need someone to hide the car keys or I just might end up with a new MacBook.] If you can’t wait until late November for a deal and you’re considering a Palm Treo Pro smartphone you’ll want to hit up… Dell?!? Yup, that’s right, Dell.

The computer retailer is long-known for selling non-PC products ranging from overpriced UMPCs to HDTVs and they’ve got a deal on the unlocked Palm Treo Pro, which normally sets you back $550. Treonauts caught word of a $100 discount code, which gets you Palm’s newest GSM smartphone for $449.99, which includes a free 3-5 day shipping option. Here’s the catch: it looks to be U.S. only and you can’t wait until Black Friday for this deal as it expires next Wednesday, November the 19th.

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The SkyDrive team promises more to come in terms of functionality, but there’s some useful tidbits in the most recent offering, especially for digital photographers:

• Larger photo thumbnails for those of us with big thumbs. I kid… the photo sizes are increased.
• A web-based slideshow function that works on "any browser" but is optimized on machines with Silverlight installed. I didn’t test the any browser claim… but I’d expect this to function fine on IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari at a minimum. Previously SkyDrive worked on PCs and Macs with IE 6/7 or Firefox 1.5 and up.
• You can tag people in your photos, something I didn’t enjoy doing until I started to use the function on Facebook. Makes it easy to find friends in pics.

There are additional features in the new release of SkyDrive as well, some geared toward data control. You can now move and copy files between folders and there’s a handy download as .ZIP file feature. SkyDrive might not be as advanced as some other services out there, but it’s worth a look, especially with the expanded capacity. I’m hoping that Microsoft gets SkyDrive pulled in to Live Mesh or at least starts blending similar services together and some seamless storage and playback of media files would be useful on a netbook in my opinion. For the moment though, with so many similar but not quite the same services, there’s still too many clouds overlapping in Redmond.

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ARM chips are very low power consumers so we could see a netbook with a near all-day battery life which just might get some folks excited.  We’ll have to wait and see how much an ARM-based netbook would cost compared to Intel powered ones as current netbook prices are already about as low as they can go and maintain full computing capabilites.

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The Windows 7 Calculator has a simple Mode switch to get you moving between the Standard, Programmer, Scientific and Statistics function, but it gets better. There’s also some built-in functions to compute everyday problems like gas mileage, mortgage or lease payments, and hourly wages. You can add this to Windows Vista with a small 358 KB download.

Aero Snap is nifty feature as well and I’m liking it on the MSI Wind which is still running the Windows 7 Milestone 3 test version. With it, you can drag a window to the side of your display and it will auto-resize to half of the screen. Pull it away from the screen and it returns to its prior size & shape. Snap it to the top of your monitor and it maximizes. Nifty and handy although some folks will of course say "meh!". If you’re not in that camp, you can grab the 823 KB executable here.

Aero Shake is another window control feature: grab any window and move it left & right for a sec to minimize all other windows. Shake it again and the windows are all restored. I find this very useful on the smaller screen of my netbook and if you think you might, you can grab the 200 KB AutoHotkey script through Lifehacker.

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The design is powered by Qualcomm’s dual-core Mobile Station Modem MSM7xxx-series chipset which provides both the computing power and the connectivity. It also offers:

• A full featured Web 2.0-capable browser from Opera
• Display output support for television and computer monitors
• Support for standard keyboard and mouse input solutions
• A music player and 3D gaming

Actual specifications are scant after that meager and general list, and while it doesn’t sound like a high-end solution by any means, it’s not meant to be. Qualcomm expects that the first units will see Southeast Asia’s CDMA2000 and WCDMA (UMTS) networks. It’s interesting to note that Inventec will produce the first units; we’ve seen mobile products from them in the form the Kohjinsha devices as well as the HP Mini-Note.

As far as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset, it sounds like folks are lining up to produce devices based upon it. Qualcomm indicates 15 device manufacturers are Snapdragon customers and I’m sure you’re recognize a few: Acer, Asus, HTC, LG, Quanta, Samsung, Toshiba are among the bunch. I’m looking forward to seeing what products we’ll see: expect power-efficient handhelds running at 1 GHz, integrated 3G & WiFi, aGPS, hardware accelerated 3G graphics and display resolution up to WXGA or 1280×768.

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Since I splurged for a Digital SLR earlier in the year I’ve been looking at Eye-Fi but kept holding myself back as the highest capacity SD card was 2GB. Today the company is announcing an Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition with 4GB of storage and faster memory speeds. The new card is available immediately for $129 on the company’s site. It’s also available for only $99.99 at Costco, which makes me very happy that we renewed our membership over the summer. It also has me thinking about uploading photos from those Wayport hotspots that AT&T just bought, since the card works with them too. For additional details on the Eye-Fi news, the full press release follows.

EYE-FI UNVEILS THE 4GB EYE-FI ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Eye-Fi Celebrates First Anniversary with 4GB Limited Edition Anniversary Card and the Win of Popular Science’s Best of What’s New Award

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 12, 2008 – Today Eye-Fi Inc. (www.eye.fi) announced a new, limited edition card – the Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition – to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras.  Eye-Fi also announced it has been chosen as one of Popular Science’s 2008 “Best of What’s New” award recipients.
“For the past year, we’ve been reinventing the way people save and share their digital memories,” said Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi. “From automatic uploading to geotagging to sharing on the go, we’ve aimed to help everyday photographers save their memories more often, share them more quickly, and add more context to their collections.”
Available immediately, the new Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition doubles storage capacity to 4GB and features faster memory speeds.  Coupled with the recently announced wireless performance upgrade, the Anniversary Edition is designed to meet the needs of the demanding photo enthusiast. Like the Eye-Fi Share, the Anniversary Edition wirelessly sends photos from a digital camera to a computer and to one of more than 25 online photo sharing sites.
The card comes in Eye-Fi’s celebrated, original slide-out package and is available only at Costco.com for $99 to club members, or on www.eye.fi for $129, while supplies last. The card can be upgraded post purchase to include additional features, such as automatic geotagging and hotspot access.
            Since the Eye-Fi card launched one year ago, millions of photos have been uploaded to the Web, and users report that they upload and share photos with family and friends more frequently.
            “With the introduction of the digital camera, the photography industry faced a real challenge – photos trapped on cameras that were never shared or printed because of the work involved,” said Alan Bullock, associate director of InfoTrends. “The industry needs pioneers like Eye-Fi who recognize the bottlenecks and build innovative solutions that move the market forward.”
Over the past year, Eye-Fi has given more and more people the ability to effortlessly share their digital memories and offered a rich, meaningful experience for users. Eye-Fi has:
Helped Take Geotagging Mainstream: Geotagging is a fast growing trend, and through a partnership with Skyhook Wireless, Eye-Fi has automated the process to make it easier and more compelling for all      consumers. Using the Wi-Fi embedded in its cards, Eye-Fi uses Wi-Fi positioning to determine where an image was captured and adds a geographic tag to each photo.
Pioneered Uploads-on-the-Go to the Top Photo Sharing Destinations: Now users can upload photos away from home at more than 10,000 Wayport hotspots with their Eye-Fi cards – even without a computer.
Introduced the “Eye-Fi Connected” Program: Eye-Fi has launched the “Eye-Fi Connected” program to help other manufacturers tap into the benefits of Eye-Fi’s wireless photo sharing ecosystem. Nikon has released two Eye-Fi connected cameras, the Nikon D60 and D90, both optimized for Eye-Fi cards. Lexar introduced the co-branded Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi® Memory Card that uses Eye-Fi’s patent-pending technology and online service.
Integrated Social Networking: Eye-Fi announced integration with Twitter and the availability of RSS feeds so users can notify their networks in real time about recent photo uploads, and photos can be viewed instantly.
International Expansion: Due to high demand, Eye-Fi plans to expand into Japan and Canada by the end of the year. Now more people worldwide will have the ability to enjoy the benefits of Eye-Fi’s products and services.

Also announced today, the Eye-Fi Explore card was chosen as one of Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New Award” recipients in the gadgets category. Each year since 1987, the editors of Popular Science review thousands of products in search of the top 100 technology innovations of the year. To win, a product or technology must represent a significant step forward in its category.
Eye-Fi’s family of products include the Eye-Fi Home, Share, Anniversary Edition and Explore cards with MSRPs ranging from $79-$129 USD. Eye-Fi cards can be purchased at Apple Retail Stores, Best Buy, Circuit City and Ritz Camera Center locations nationwide, and at major online retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Costco.com. Eye-Fi has garnered numerous awards, including PC World’s “The 100 Best Products of 2008” and Yahoo! Tech’s “Last Gadget Standing 2008.” For more information, please visit www.eye.fi.

###

About Eye-Fi
Founded in 2005, the company is dedicated to building products and services that help consumers navigate, nurture and share their visual memories. Eye-Fi’s patent-pending technology works with Wi-Fi networks to automatically send photos from a digital camera to online, in-home and retail destinations. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., the company’s investors include LMS Capital, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and TransLink Capital. More information is available at www.eye.fi.

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Julie at The Gadgeteer has picked one of these USB modems up for her own use and has published a thorough review of it that even includes some speed test results.  Take those with a grain of salt as we’ve told you before because EV-DO speeds are totally dependent on the exact location of the test.  It’s a good review with lots of photos showing how far it sticks out of the laptop so give it a view if you’re curious about the 727.

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Philly here I come

Kevin’s wedding is finally upon us and I’m probably 35,000 feet up in the air heading that way as this goes live.  I’m really looking forward to this trip even though it’s just in on Friday and out Sunday morning but it will be very cool to see Kevin tie the knot.  We’re both getting asked if it’s going to be live-blogged but let’s give Kev and Barb some privacy here.  Who knows if at least one photo will appear from the festivities.  :)  I can’t wait to see Kevin in a tuxedo like a penguin.

I don’t expect to get much work done on this trip, after all it falls on the weekend and everyone deserves those off, right?  I am always trying to be prepared though and this trip I’m bringing the MacBook and my Verizon USB modem for 3G connectivity.  That’s pretty much it.  This will be my first trip with the new MacBook and I’m going to give it a test to see how well it travels.  I did pick up that second battery so the 8-10 hours I’m seeing from that will be plenty no matter what.  We’ll see how it goes and I’ll let you know.

I am going to take a new gadget that just showed up yesterday.  It’s embargoed right now so I can’t say anything about it yet but will be able to soon.  It’s pretty cool and very appropriate for this type of trip and I should get some quality time with it to share.

It’s just the Android

I haven’t shared my first impressions of the T-Mobile G1 Android phone yet as I was waiting for the firmware/ OS update to appear.  It made sense to hold off until that arrived since it might change things so that’s what I waited for.  It finally showed up on Wednesday of this week via a brief notification on the phone that it was available.  I clicked Install and that’s what it did for about five minutes.  It was painless and required no intervention on my part and I’m impressed with T-Mobile for how well the process went.  I’m not sure exactly what the update affected although the phone is definitely snappier than before.  It wasn’t slow before but it’s noticeably faster now.

I’ll be doing a real posting of my first impressions soon but I can tell you now that if you’re already using all the standard Google Apps then you’ll love the tight integration with the G1.  GMail and Google Calendar work very well on the phone and I enjoy using them with the G1.  I am also happy with the performance of the T-Mobile 3G network in Houston as it seems pretty snappy almost everywhere I go. 

Pruning the gadget tree

It’s approaching the time of year when I consider getting rid of the gadgets that I don’t use much.  There are always so many notebooks, phones and the like that I reach a point I can’t even turn around in my office.  This is necessary to make room for any cool new gadgets that show up here.  This year I am thinking of parting with two gadgets that I previously would never have considered losing. 

The first is my real workhorse desktop replacement, the 17-inch MacBook Pro.  It really surprised me when it first occurred to me that I could part with it as it’s been the computer always in use at my desk for well over a year.  The only reason I can even think about doing this is the new MacBook I bought recently.  It’s more portable and with its better processor, GPU and front-side bus it is just plain faster than the older Pro.  Not that the Pro is slow, far from it and the only way I could get rid of it would be by adding a larger external screen for use at my desk.  The new 24-inch Cinema Display from Apple would be perfect and would allow me to use the same computer at the desk that I carry with me while mobile.  One computer is easier to keep synced than two, that’s for sure.  I haven’t decided about this yet but am seriously considering it.

The other notebook I’m thinking of divesting is the HP 2710p.  I am having serious trouble reconciling doing this though as it’s been such an integral part of my work life for so long.  It’s still an extremely capable notebook and a stellar Tablet PC but it kills me to see it sitting in its dock on my side table not being used much.  I take it out from time to time but it’s no longer my main mobile device so most of the time it’s just sitting there charging.  This decision is especially hard because it’s the only Tablet PC I own currently.  The fact is I don’t use the note-taking ability of it in my work anymore so I mainly use the Tablet mode for sitting around surfing the web and that’s not a compelling reason to keep it as I don’t do that much anymore.  I would have to bring myself to the point I could do get rid of it however and I’m not there yet.

New programs I like

This week I picked up a couple of free programs to give a shot, one that is new and the other that is old.  Gimp has been an image editor that many have been swearing by for a long time but I admit I have never tried it.  I find myself needing to edit images more frequently these days to I decided to give it a shot.  It’s free after all, right?  I installed it on the MacBook and I’m pretty impressed with it so far, although it’s overwhelming at first.  It’s staggering to consider how much capability has been crammed into a free program like Gimp.  It runs under the X11 windowing system but the OS X installer handles that for you with no problem.  It’s going to be a long time before I’m comfortable with Gimp to use it routinely.

The other program I grabbed is brand new for the iPhone and it makes handling my To-Do list much easier and better.  I have mentioned my fondness for Remember The Milk in a past column and it’s still my task manager of choice.  The only thing I felt the RTM process was missing was a native iPhone app to make working with my data better.  That was released this week and I jumped on it quick as it’s a free download.  Now it does require a RTM Pro account which I already had ($25/ year I think) but otherwise it’s free.  I am loving this program on the iPhone and the ability to quickly jump in and see my tasks I need to be thinking about and to add new ones as needed.  I’m very impressed with the RTM folks and how they are continuing to improve their offering.  It makes me feel good for my choice of RTM.

eBook of the week

This week I ripped through one of the finest page-turners I’ve read in a while. Shadow Man by Cody McFadyen starts the series with FBI agent Smoky Barrett and it is so full of twists and turns that it kept me tapping the page-turning button constantly.  It’s a great start to what looks to be a wonderful series and I can’t wait to start the next book.

Wrap-up

This concludes the peek into my week at Mobile Tech Manor and I enjoyed your visit.  There is always something happening here so stop by next week if you can.

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