Gmail has finally added a feature that has been a long time in coming, but like so many other new features, it’s in the Labs.
Most email services have had inline image embedding for ages, but Gmail, which just celebrated its 5th birthday, has been lacking this feature up until now. Just announced today, Gmail now supports image embedding, but like so many other new features as of late, you have to go and turn it on in your settings. For those unfamiliar with the process, you need to go to “Settings” at the top of the screen, click on the “Labs” tab, and scroll down until you find “Inserting images”. Once you have it up and running you’ll see an icon up in the tools that will let you insert images from your own hard drive, or even enter the URL of an image from a website and it will be inserted.
Why this particular feature took so long to be added is a mystery, but it is even bigger mystery why absolutely new feature that comes to Gmail has been part of Labs lately instead of just added directly to the service. An even bigger mystery is why when they do add these features, they show up in Gmail, but not their Apps version of the service that webmasters use for quite some time. A universal roll out of these new features would be nice, and it would also be nice to see them be situations where users don’t have to go and turn them on. We can at least all dream of that day.
After what seems like years of consumers begging, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally agreed to review the United States national startegy for broadband access, but will it be enough?
While the rest of the world has been zooming past the United States in terms of the broadband speeds available to the their citizens, the United States has lacked any sort of national broadband initiative. The government is now setting aside $7.2 billion to work on the National Broadband Plan (Adobe Reader link), but the initial parameters are a bit disheartening.
From now until February 17, 2010, the commission will be collecting data from various sources including the public about what parts of the country are underserviced by broadband access. So we are already looking at over studying the needs of the country to death, but the other hurdle is that the FCC currently defines “broadband” as 768 Kbps, a speed so slow that you can barely even watch online video with it.
The median speed of broadband in the United States is currently below 5 Mbps, but according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), other countries are already light years ahead of us. Japan averages 63 Mbps, South Korea runs at 49 Mbps and just this week Australia began work on bringing 100 Mbps to most of their residents with a minimum of 12 Mbps to the rest. So while we “study” the problem, the rest of the world continues to excel past us, and we may end up aiming for speeds they were at years ago, setting ourselves even further behind.
According to the FCC’s own press release, these are the four initial goals of the study:
The most effective and efficient ways to ensure broadband access for all Americans
Strategies for achieving affordability and maximum utilization of broadband infrastructure and services
Evaluation of the status of broadband deployment, including the progress of related grant programs
How to use broadband to advance consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, worker training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation, and economic growth, and other national purposes.
The problems already bother me. Where is the statement of setting a national target speed? What about setting a target price consumers can expect to spend instead of this all over the board pricing we currently suffer under? Monthly bandwidth caps? Net nuetrality? For now this sounds an awful lot like “We’ll form a group to study the study that studied the other study…”, you get the picture.
At least they are doing something, but it certainly doesn’t sound very promising at this point, and especially not for the $7.2 billion they plan to spend on it.
While there have been previous dictionary applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, almost all of them have cost as much as $24.99. Well, Dictionary.com has decided to ruin the party for all of those other applications by not only launching their app for free, but it is also amazingly full-featured. They could have gotten away with just a few thousand words, but instead the app has full definitions for 275,000 entries, and they also included a thesaurus with 80,000 synonyms. However, the features don’t even stop there. They also include:
Alphabetical indexing
Similarly spelled words
Spelling and audio pronunciation
Example sentences
Non-standard uses
Word origin and history
All said, it is an amazing app, and made even more so due to the free pricing of it. The only drawback is the size of the app is a hefty 35.6 MBs and they recommend you only install it when connected via Wi-Fi or your device is connected to your computer (iTunes link) because of the length of time it would take over cellular networks. From our initial look at the app, it is well worth the time, effort and amount of space it takes up.
AudioMicro, the royalty free music provider, has teamed up with the Blastwave FX Sound Effects Library to add 32,000 more sound effects to their library.
Just last month we brought you the news that AudioMicro had teamed up with Family Guy composer Ron Jones to add 170 original pieces of music to their library, and now they are bringing content producers a whopping 32,000 sound effects. This new collection of sounds brings things such as ambience, animals, impacts, guns, science fiction, whooshes and more to the collection, royalty free, for those looking to make their own videos for sites such as YouTube.
Royalty free music and sound effects have become a more vital part of the online video landscape due to copyright holders looking harder and harder at unlicensed use of their works on various sites. This has been a quick way to get videos you may have labored on tirelessly for days to be removed from a lot of sites. Luckily if you pay for royalty free music, this will never be a concern for you, and as odd as it may sound to some people, even hearing a gun fire can be a copyrighted work.
This is probably going to become a bigger issue in the coming years due to the ease with which people can make videos now. With cameras such as the Flip, which just about anyone can easily run, people are producing videos in unimaginable numbers. So if you feel the need to add a slipping sound to your father falling down while shoveling snow, just make sure it is one you have the right to use.
CBS has release an iPhone application which may spell out the future of television and mobile phone convergence.
Television shows being promoted via exclusive mobile phone content is not anything new, but having an entire application built around one show is. Starting on April 9th, CBS will be launching a limited 13 episode series entitled Harper’s Island which is a murder mystery dealing with a series of deaths on a small island near Seattle, WA.
This is an unusual format for an American television series, and hence will require some unique promotion on the part of the network. What the Harper’s Island iPhone application (iTunes link) does is provide viewers with extra information about the history of the island and its inhabitants via clippings from the fictions Harper’s Globe newspaper archives. It also focuses heavily on a series of murders known as the “Wakefield Murders” that happened seven years before the happenings of the series.
While we are sure you will be able to enjoy the series without the information contained in this application, it does sound like it might enhance your enjoyment of the show. What we think is interesting is that according to a quote in Broadcasting & Cable from Jeff Sellinger, Executive-VP and general manager CBS Mobile, this is but the first of many applications to come. “We’re absolutely going to do more,” he said. He also went on to add “the company is also exploring applications for Blackberrys as well as Apple iPhones.” (although we wonder the confusion there at the end since this is for an iPhone…) So this could be the first of many applications coming out that aim to enhance your enjoyment of various television shows. Who wouldn’t want a 24 application that helps you track the number of people Jack Bauer has killed?
The application is available now in the iTunes store for free, and the television series premieres on April 9th.
Popular lifestreaming service FriendFeed launched a new version today, and boy does it feel familiar.
FriendFeed launched their new beta version today at beta.friendfeed.com, and while we love the new color scheme (the old one was almost too white), the resemblance to the Twitter layout is striking. Using the two-column setup has long been a standard in Web design, but it almost feels like this is too close for comfort to the look and feel of the popular microblogging service.
As you can see from the below images, this is so radically different from the original version of the service that it almost feels like a completel different service.
And the new version:
While the old version did also utilize a two-column feel, flipping it to the other side, boxing in the controls and adding an avatar next to all activity really did change the feel of the system. This isn’t to say it’s a bad thing, quite the contrary. I have belonged to FriendFeed since almost the day it launched, but I have not been a heavy user of the service because it always felt a little too jumbled and difficult to follow who was saying what. This is a much cleaner user interface, and one that feels like it will be far easier to follow the conversations.
Continuing the Twitter like inspiration, that have also made it far easier for you to post an update to what you are doing with a box at the top of the page that can also be crossposted to your Twitter account. They have also added the ability to send direct messages to other users, another favorite feature of Twitter users.
Overall we like the new look and feel of the service, but it certainly isn’t breaking any fresh ground.
URL shortening services all seem to do the same thing by just converting those lengthy URLs into something shorter, and more manageable. When we first covered BurnURL upon its launch last month, we noted how it was bringing a more social aspect to the URL shortening space, and they are improving on that even more with this release.
The first thing you notice is that the up and down voting arrows have been replaced with five emoticons. This is an effort to better reflect how you felt about the article, and you can choose from Boring, Sad, Useful, Funny and Exciting. While more interesting than the old system, I’m not sure why anyone would bother with a Boring rating, but we’ll see how much it gets used.
Next to the emoticons, you’ll see a button for “Tweets” which will show you how many people have Tweeted this particular URL on Twitter.
The sharing button is the next in the line, and while the sharing on services such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, FriendFeed, Mixx, Reddit, Delicious or StumbleUpon was there in the previous release, they have now been moved to this pop out tab so that the bar is friendlier to those with smaller screen resolutions.
Also inside of the Share tab is now the ability to email the article to other people. As someone who has many “non-techie” friends who don’t spend much time surfing the Web, I am a big user of emailing links, so this is a very welcome inclusion for me.
The last thing is probably more interesting to site owners, but the stats area now shows you the number of unique views for the link as well as the total views.
All in all, some very nice upgrades to an already very useful service, and our favorite choice for URL shortening.
(Disclosure: BurnURL is partially owned by Adam Ostrow with whom I work with at Mashable. This post however was in no way influenced by our working relationship, it’s just a great service)
March was one of of our best months yet here on StarterTech, and here are the top 5 posts that our readers enjoyed the most.
Twitter Cartoon Explains It All -Apparently people really like the idea of a cartoon explaining how Twitter works… or the just like the idea of the Fail Whale randomly attacking people.
Celebrities Flocking To Twitter And Over Sharing -Celebrities seem to be appearing in droves on Twitter as of late, but with that comes far more information than you wanted to know about most of them.
Gmail Adds Two New Features – Google just can’t seem to stop adding new features to Gmail as of late. The latest features are Undo and YouTube video previews. Undo is a so-so type of add-on, but the video preview is fantastic.
Apple Announces iPhone OS 3.0 Features -Apple had a lot of new features to announce for iPhone OS 3.0, and while it seems silly copy-and-paste would be the thing to excite people the most… it was.
If you’ve been wondering how an application gets built for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can stop wondering as Stanford University is here to answer your questions.
Stanford on iTunes has offered copies of courses, faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports for some time, but now they are offering a free full course on how to develop applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While this is a regular course at Stanford, all of the class materials will be available on their iTunes pages with a few days of the actual class meetings. While students in the physical 10-week course will receive class credit, those online won’t.
Considering the proliferation of iPhone applications being produced by third-party developers, and no obvious end in sight of demand, those with an idea for an application couldn’t find a better bargain on learning how to bring their concept to fruition. If you are interested in following along with the course, you will need an Intel-based Mac of some type and the Apple SDK. If you would like to find out more about the course, you can check out the following links.
Considering the gushing tones of love most people use to speak about Twitter, it may be hard to believe there are people out there who dislike it.
Simon Cowell, the professional curmudgeon judge of American Idol, had some choice words for people who use the service today in the Telegraph.
“Why would you want to talk to people like that? It’s like phoning someone randomly whose number you don’t even have and saying: ‘Hi, it’s Simon, I went out with my family this weekend’.”
While he may have summed up what some people do with the service, I tend to think the service is different to almost every person. In my case, my uses for Twitter change almost hourly. I can be sharing personal information one minute, and the next I’m promoting one of my many blog articles. While I do think celebrities do tend to overshare information on the service, it is a great way for them to communicate with their fans, and make them feel more connected.
Sure the service can be a bit random at time by anyone’s standards, but isn’t that half of the fun of it?
Gmail has finally added a feature that has been a long time in coming, but like so many other new features, it’s in the Labs.
Why this particular feature took so long to be added is a mystery, but it is even bigger mystery why absolutely new feature that comes to Gmail has been part of Labs lately instead of just added directly to the service. An even bigger mystery is why when they do add these features, they show up in Gmail, but not their Apps version of the service that webmasters use for quite some time. A universal roll out of these new features would be nice, and it would also be nice to see them be situations where users don’t have to go and turn them on. We can at least all dream of that day.
After what seems like years of consumers begging, the 
The popular online dictionary 
Popular lifestreaming service 
March was one of of our best months yet here on 
If you’ve been wondering how an application gets built for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can stop wondering as Stanford University is here to answer your questions.
Considering the gushing tones of love most people use to speak about 
