Business travelers are often finding a client location — a meet spot, or an office — while on the roads. A new product here makes that a job for an iPhone of any sort, using the built-in GPS of the device. Navigon AG has launched a design-focused car kit for the iPhone at Macworld. The Navigon Car Kit consists of an iPhone mounting device and designer suction pad holder, plus an Apple-certified connection cord and a car charger, which powers the iPhone while on the road.

“The iPhone is the most elegant smartphone available, therefore a mount should never get in the way of showcasing the design,” said Gerhard Mayr, VP of worldwide mobile phones & new markets. The mount is designed to fix to the windshield to reduce driver distraction and position the iPhone for optimal GPS signal. Directions, whether they’re just Maps or a GPS app, drive down the battery in a hurry, so the included car charger and the five foot connection cable make sure the iPhone battery doesn’t drain. The kit is now available for the iPhone 3G/S and 4, and sells for $49.99 with free shipping — with an introductory price of $44.99 until Feb 3, from www.bringmobi.com.

The company says Navigon MobileNavigator is the first universal navigation app from a major GPS company (it’s been in business since 1991) that runs natively on the iPhone and the iPad. Users with MobileNavigator installed can use the app on both devices without extra charges. It utilizes the iPad’s large display and user interface with a higher resolution, and new menus. Route planning shows a scrollable, multi-touch map to select destinations in simple taps. Users can plan routes at home on the iPad and then send them to their iPhone for navigation on the go.

Navigon is located at booth 943 At Macworld Expo, where there’s free stuff in a contest. The company will give away 30 licenses for the award winning MobileNavigator app via a Twitter wall. Include a defined hashtag (#) (revealed at the booth) in a tweet. Winners are announced each day at 4pm on Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

The iPad alternatives are a-comin’ this spring, or so we are promised in a bit of web advertising from this vendor and that. The wanna-be’s of mobile desktops range far and wide in price, availability and size. But none of them can top the cheeky sass of Toshiba. The maker of DVD players and Windows laptops wants an iPad user to switch, sending a special nyah-nyah from its website.

When an iPad user arrives at the web page that teases about Toshiba’s tablet, you get greeted by the screen to the left, which is force-fed to you as the website determines you’re an iPad user. Mind you, Toshiba could have served up even more useful information in its we-haven’t-shipped message: Something like an exact date of release, or crucial data such as weight of their Tablet. Or its price. On and on it goes with the competitors to the best mobile computer Apple ever released. They want to remind you that you’re not part of the largest group of web users: the ones that have to swallow the battery-sucking, horsepower-choking Flash.

It’s quite the ad ploy, but Toshiba’s device managers must be hedging their bets, because Daring Fireball reported that lopping off the apple.html on the web page directs you to an HTML 5 page where its snappy movie runs fine. Runs even more apparently than the tablet, which doesn’t even have a video demo on the web. (Toshiba’s reading Daring Fireball, because less than a day after the HTML 5 trick was posted, Toshiba killed off access to everything that didn’t use the “apple.html” on the web page address. Odd though: apparently Toshiba doesn’t own the name to its product on the web; head to toshibatablet.com to see it’s got nothing to do with mobile computing. More confusing is that Toshiba sold what it called a tablet for months already: the Portege Tablet, all last year at about $1,700, because that sparkler was a Windows PC with a touchscreen interface.

What to buy for a tablet this year? You could wait to see what’s on sale by the time these Android-powered tablets finally clear company tests and go into the market. By that late date, though, Apple will have an iPad 2 ready for you to purchase, a device that now has more than 30,000 apps written for it. Even though it won’t have all those blessed ports (USB, microSD, video output, thick toast), the iPad 2 will be available to everybody on Day One (no shortages this time; Apple’s put in a massive component order and is building the devices now) and we know it will be under $600, somehow. Those two features, availability and value, are likely to be hard to beat by a wave of smarty-pants vendors hooking up with Android.

On that best-mobile-ever claim above: You can use an iPad (model 1) as your travel laptop even today. Starting Wednesday I’ll be posting news and photos using nothing more than my iPad, the 16GB no wi-fi model, a Kensington Bluetooth keyboard and case, and an iPhone for my camera. You’ll be able to read the reports from Macworld Expo — a show just crawling with tablet apps like the new DK Publishing travel guides to major cities, or the Mobile Office Suite that lets you edit PowerPoint presentations. See, while everybody with an iPad is likely to have another computer to watch that sassy Toshiba teaser ad, few of the Toshiba tablet buyers will have 30,000 apps to make their tablets useful. Not this year, or even by this time next year.

As the Consumer Electronics Show wraps up, the week uncapped numbers that might give a small business user concern about choosing Apple’s solutions: the iPhone, the iPad, perhaps even the Mac itself. Estimates now show more phones using Android, Google’s phone operating systems, than Apple’s iOS iPhones.

The developments can be parsed to show Android is moving to a dominant position in the market. One marketing analyst I know thinks Android’s wide-open structure for app development is the key to making Google’s Android Number 1, and adds that it’s a ranking that will draw more interest from developers. That might translate into fewer apps for the iPhone/iPad user. It’s a horse race mentality, this analysis, one designed for the short attention span.

Is this really all we want? “Wow, we’re selling the most!” Because our lives seem littered with stuff that’s top-of-the-charts, but sucks to own. There’s got to be a higher goal to aim for than “We sell more than anybody else.” Great for the vendor, and a real home run for the marketeer. Not so great for the buyer of products to run a small business, where there’s less room for a mistake in acquiring these tools.

A Google exec said in Walt Mossberg’s WSJ column that today’s Android is a product for early adopters. Maturity is still in the future for this iPhone/iPad alternative. Google gives away the OS, while Apple sells its app technology. There’s accountability for quality in the Apple model, and virtually none in Google’s.

But my analyst friend Guy Smith of Silicon Marketing Strategies believes that when a lot of companies start to use something that’s free, “that is an indicator of an acceptable level of maturity.” This all smells like the Windows dog-pile of two decades ago, and I do mean smells.
Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s been touted as an example of what HP once was: an innovator and powerhouse that built its own successes. The iPad has become so popular so quick that it’s now outselling Macs. And so the mavens of the Apple world now consider how much longer the Mac can survive Apple’s own clever creation: the iOS environment, now driving 70 million iPhones and 15 million iPads, the new nirvana. These ideals are promoted by the people who have little invested in the Mac OS X. They forget to nurture their ancestors’ wisdom.

Exhibit A: A column from new contributor John Gruber on the back page of MacWorld. He seems to wonder if Apple is as typical as HP, because “At typical companies, ‘legacy’ technology is something you figure out how to carry forward. At Apple, legacy technology is something you figure out how to get rid of.”

There’s some problems with this take on how vendors work. First, legacy only gets carried forward at a big customer’s insistence. At typical companies like HP, legacy technology is something you figure out how to marginalize and push into the boutique shadows. Much of the decade before HP’s announced departure in 2001 from the HP 3000 enterprise world — just four weeks from being complete — was spent pushing MPE aside to trumpet Unix. (How’s that choice working for you now, HP? Those footsteps you hear are Linux, not WebOS.)

It’s always easier to sit in a developer’s chair and say the future lies in the newest design, especially if it’s growing more popular by the quarter. But customers — millions of them using Macs today, even in business — sit in different chairs and see investments they want a vendor to protect. A great company learns to balance protection with the innovation. Disney didn’t stop making cartoons just because it discovered live-action movies and amusement parks. Read the rest of this entry »

Keyfolio keypad: An iPad version of a netbook

One of the best additions I’ve made to my iPad this year has been the Kensington Keyfolio keyboard. It’s a Bluetooth keyboard that includes a nice protective, leather case for the iPad. It also adds a stand capability to the iPad, one which works just great to browse the Web from bed in the morning if you’re getting a pre-dawn start on your work day. In a way, this adds the touch interface of the iPad to the concept of a netbook. The weight of the combined keyboard and iPad comes in at 2.75 pounds, so you’re right into the netbook weight category.

The Keyfolio has a great battery saving feature, pulling itself offline when you stop using it for an extended period. It doesn’t need to be resynced often, and you can bypass it by simply switching it off to use the iPad onscreen keyboard.

It’s a great product in the Kensington tradition: well built, lightweight, protects your iPad. Even can be used in a non-keyboard setting (i.e. just a case to use while reading your iPad.) Some say you can’t use it on your lap, but a nice lap desk (think Levenger) makes that possible, too. Big improvement over the on-screen keyboard.

Only the Apple iPad dock has better speed, but it’s not a traveling tool like this one. This keyboard recognizes and includes the cursor arrows, unlike some iPad writing apps whose softkey keyboards do not. I wish there were a shift key on both sides of this keyboard, and the apostrophe key has its own key that’s not in an intuitive place. You type a bit slower at first while using it, but get used to having those keys in unusual places. So far, very happy with this product. In a way, this makes the iPad a great alternative to the new MacBook Air, which at first glance seems like an iPad with an attached keyboard. The Air weighs a little more than the Keyfolio combo, and of course, it’s a full Mac. Just doesn’t have that touch interface, but a lot richer field of applications.

Keyfolio is $69.99 at Amazon today and worth every penny. I bought an Apple Keyboard Dock in the very first month of the iPad’s existence, but the Apple device doesn’t offer a landscape mode like the Keyfolio does. (Keyfolio won’t do portrait, in contrast.) But the Apple keyboard isn’t portable and won’t act as a stand for Netflix movies. There’s a lot to like here.

Samsung has announced it’ll be shipping out an alternative to the iPad, the Galaxy Tab. Samsung’s unit manager believes the company will sell 10 million of the Galaxy Tab, and the device might be sold for $300, although nobody’s sure of pricing.

If nothing else kept you from buying this, the following paragraph would do the job:

Rather than sell it directly to consumers, Samsung will rely on its carrier partners to sell the Galaxy Tab, which runs on Google Inc.’s  Android software, comes with a cellular connection, and features a seven-inch screen. The tablet will debut in Italy, moving to other markets as Samsung locks in more carrier deals.

Take a good look: this is the least bloated Galaxy tablet you'll ever see, sans the usual Android crapware

Carrier-controlled devices are built and sold to seal the deal on carrier plans. Those are the two-year contracts you’re usually trying to break when something better is announced. The carriers are given control of what’s loaded on the tablet which cannot be removed: that’s an aspect of using an Android phone or tablet. Apple does a little of this — stocks, weather, Maps, contacts, a browser, photo app, videos and iTunes. But that’s all, and it’s the same Apple-built apps for every iPad or iPhone sold.

What’s more, the iPad apps are built to withstand malware and hacks — or at least far better built to repel that junk than open source software from the Android world.

Carriers, on the other hand, can build and install whatever they can get to run on Android. It can be something they cut a deal with a company to install, another way to generate some bucks. And it can be real crapware, defined as stuff that may bug up your system, but whether you like it or not it’s still a very lucrative source of advertising revenue for the carriers. You can’t remove it because Android is open. Read the rest of this entry »

A longtime friend of mine set up camp today in the pro-Flash region, tagging the iPad as having a serious blind spot to the wonders of Adobe’s visual software. As the world knew in April, the iPad doesn’t support Flash. As the world has learned after 3.2 million sales of the iPad in the first 90 days, users don’t seem to care. There is, after all, little that Flash does to help a business user.

An Apple content sales agenda — sell more movies! — was the only reason my pal could see that his girlfriend’s iPad was Flash-less. He was right about one thing: the iPad is much better at letting you consume information than producing it. It’s a weakness that might be firmed up in the second 100 days of the product’s life. When there’s about 7 million of them in the marketplace.

But Flash? It’s sort of a hot topic if you have to view it on Apple’s business products — or anybody else’s. Hot as in spin your fan, heat your laptop bottom, slow your user experience down. It’s not the content, it’s the compromise. That’s what drove Flash off mobile devices iPhones and the iPad. Apple doesn’t want us to get burned by the power demands of Flash.

Want to view the future of a Web without Flash? It’s coming, and it’s arrived first on your iPad screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though it’s illegal to text and drive in 30 US states by now, people still want to capture their drive time for business productivity. A new iPhone app proposes a way to review email while driving — by having messages read to you over your iPhone.

Text’nDrive, sold for a hearty $19.95 for the iPhone, reads incoming emails aloud, according to its press release.

One thing that’s a little more difficult to do is check my email while I’m stuck in rush hour traffic on my way to work. And if you commute in California, I know you feel my pain. If you hate wasting that time like I do however, I highly recommend you take a look at Text’nDrive. This is an application that will read your emails out loud to you as they come in (Hands free, I might add!) and let you reply. It’s a great way to stay safe on the road while staying caught up with work.

You may need advanced driving skills to be able to concentrate on traffic and your mail at the same time. The hands-free aspect of multitasking solves only part of the challenges in controlling a car at 60MPH while you review your correspondence. But if the prospect sounds enticing, you can cruise to the iTunes app store for more details and a chance to drive your communication longer and faster.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek has posted a report that chronicles the methods that businesses are using to adopt iPads. “Businesses including beauty salons and restaurants are experimenting with new tasks for Apple’s tablet computer,” reads the intro to a 650-word overview of how the three-month-old tablet is already taking hold.

“In a warehouse, your travel time to pick orders is 50 percent of an employee’s time,” says Tim Markley, president of Elkhart (Ind.)-based Markley Enterprise, a 75-person firm that designs marketing displays for stores and trade shows. “We put pedometers on our people and we actually saw steps decrease by 30 percent with the iPad,” he says.

The BusinessWeek site also has confirmation that much larger companies, such as Wells Fargo, are adopting Apple’s large-format business tool.

After creating the VPN Tracker client for Virtual Private Networks on the Mac, equinux has released what it calls an “over the air solutions for setting up iPhones and iPads in business.”

TARMAC is billed as the first professional provisioning tool tailored specifically for the Apple platform. Medium to large enterprises can use it to securely set up and manage their iPhones and iPads over-the-air.

“TARMAC is a milestone for the use of the iPhone and iPad in businesses,”said equinux CEO Till Schadde. “We’ve tailored TARMAC specifically to [Apple's iOS mobile] platform rather than for a myriad of other devices. TARMAC is the only dedicated solution for the iPhone and iPad, making no technical compromises.”

Businesses can use TARMAC to remotely set up their iPhones and iPads without needing to manually connect them to a machine. TARMAC Server operates within a company’s network and using an existing directory service to automatically create personalized user profiles. Read the rest of this entry »