A marque that only an engineer could love? (Torsten Silz/2009 AFP)

By Art Silverman

A proud Swedish company that I had a personal relationship with is floundering. The company is Saab -- and it was once a cool, techy business. Just look at its original name: "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget." That's Swedish for "Swedish Aeroplane Company."

I didn't know Saab was an acronym, honestly, I thought it was the Swedish word for a car that looks like it has spinal problems.

Turns out that's because the aeronautical engineers who were designing Saabs wanted it to be more aerodynamic. And Saab's were SAFE. In the 1950s Saab was the first car maker to make seatbelts standard and in the 70's you could buy a Saab with side-impact protection.

Then today I read the bad news -- GM's Saab Sale Falls Through.

Continue reading "Memories Of A Car Ahead Of Its Time: The Saab 96" >

By Clare Foran

Last June Microsoft launched its highly-anticipated search engine, Bing. The would-be competitor to Google got more media attention than it got traction with the public. Bing currently generates about 9.9 percent of Internet searches in the U.S.

Hoping to improve its position, Microsoft is said to be in talks with News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's publicly-traded news conglomerate, to set a pay deal for exclusive access to the company's content.

The idea goes like this: News Corp, which owns sites like The Wall Street Journal and MySpace, would pull its content from Google, giving Bing exclusive search rights. And it doesn't stop there. The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is already looking to do similar deals with other news organizations.

Continue reading "Microsoft's Bing Considers Search Deal With Murdoch's News Corp." >

Is achieving enlightenment as simple as connecting your PS3 to Netflix? (Marc_Smith / via Flickr)

By Kim Bryant

A couple weeks ago, Netflix shipped us a Blu-ray disc that allows us to watch movies on our TV instantly, using our PS3.

If you'd seen us when we fired it up the first time, you'd have thought Nirvana came rolling down and parked its fat, happy, Buddha-behind on top of our house.

Setup was a cakewalk. We popped the disc in the PS3, logged into our Netflix account using a laptop, went to netflix.com/PS3 and entered the code that the TV screen displayed. A la peanut butter sandwiches, we were off and running immediately.

You can use the instant queue service for up to 6 systems on a single Netflix Unlimited account, which boggles my mind. The Blu-ray disc serves as a key, requiring you to insert it each time you want to use the service.Netflix instant queue is also available on other devices, including Xbox360, TiVo, and several Blu-ray players.

The menu is easy to use, even for a non-gamer like me. The instant viewing items in my Netflix queue are served up in the first tab, including ones I'd originally ordered on DVD that are now available via this streaming service. The remaining tabs cover new releases, themes compiled by Netflix like "Suspenseful Crime Dramas," and custom genres that appear to be based on preferences I specified in Netflix's online recommendation engine (e.g., "Quirky Indie Films"). If you come back to a tab, the system remembers the last item you browsed, which is useful because there are up to 100 items under each tab.

I haven't found an easy way to navigate straight to a specific movie using just the PS3 controller. For this reason, I'd strongly recommend that you use the Web site to load up your instant queue before using the PS3 platform the first time. I haven't found a simple search box, which I hope they add soon and model on their auto-complete field at netflix.com.

More bliss and hiccups, after the jump.

Continue reading "PS3 Plus Netflix: With A Fast Connection, It's Golden" >

Online publishing pioneer Phil Agre. (Tom Ingvardsen / ingvards.dk)

By Andy Carvin

Several weeks ago, the family of information studies professor Phil Agre reported him missing, saying that they had not heard from him in over a year. At first glance, it may seem like a fairly typical missing persons case - families lose touch with relatives and begin to worry about their safety. For Agre, though, the situation is somewhat more complex. He's a well-known Internet researcher and online publishing pioneer with fans all over the world. He doesn't necessarily seem like the type of person who could just vanish without a trace. But vanish he has, and now his friends are mobilizing to find him.

As reported by the Chronicle for Higher Education, Agre's sister filed a missing persons report last month. Agre hadn't just gone missing, though. The report stated that he had abandoned his job and apartment possibly as far back as year ago, and that he suffers from manic depression.

Agre's online influence reaches far and wide - which makes it all the more surprising that he could have gone missing for such a long time without more people noticing. He was the publisher of the Red Rock Eaters News Service, an influential mailing list he started in the mid-1990s that ran for around a decade. A mix of news, Internet policy and politics, RRE served as a model for many of today's political blogs and online newsletters.

I was influenced by Agre, too. I became a fan of the Red Rock Eaters list in the 90s, and encountered online references to it almost on a daily basis. I was always excited to see one of my articles or projects cited in it. With Agre's curation, RRE reached thousands of Internet researchers, policymakers and some of the first bloggers. Agre had established a sizable online network and knew how to use it - so much so, he even published a how-to guide on using the Net to strengthen your professional relationships.

In Agre's case, it seems, all too many of these relationships were held at arm's length. Many of us who knew his work didn't really know him, and some others who did, lost touch with him over the years, particularly as he cut back on his online publishing.

He and I knew each other online, but not well. He wrapped up his work on RRE as I changed jobs and moved to NPR. It didn't seem strange for me to not see his name on a daily basis any more. Relationships evolve online as the do offline; I'd simply lost touch with him and his work. And apparently I wasn't the only one.

Continue reading "The Mysterious Disappearance Of Phil Agre" >

By Tamara Keith

When Google unveiled its Google Maps Navigation system it sent shock waves through the portable navigation device industry. Stock in Garmin is down 16 percent since Google announced its navigation app would be free on the Verizon Droid phone and, as of yesterday, others including T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the G1. TomTom stock is off 32 percent.

The question the markets are clearly asking is: If people can get good navigation in their smart phone at no extra charge, why would they pay $150 for a stand-alone GPS device?

Analysts fully expect the Droid and other GPS enabled smart phones to cut into the portable navigation market. But how does the Droid with Google Maps Navigation match up with stand-alone devices?

Pretty darned well.

Google is giving TomTom and Garmin a run for their money with their new, free navigation service. (Tamara Keith / NPR)

Google Navigation is a full-service, turn-by-turn guidance system. It's voice activated so you can tell the Droid where you want to go, and most of the time it makes a pretty accurate guess. The stand-alone GPS devices are loaded with points of interest, but they tend to be pretty limited. An exact address or intersection is often required. This is an area where Google Navigation has a strong advantage. The system is very fast, quickly finding an address or point of interest and generating a route.

With stand-alone portable navigation devices, the maps are built in. The Droid, however, connects to Google maps through Verizon's 3G network. So, you need cell service to access the navigation, which wasn't an issue during my road tests.

Often the system offers two or three different routes to choose from. It calculates how long it should take based on traffic conditions. Driving from my home to the office 10 miles away, it came up with three choices.

The system allows you to add layers of data to the map. For instance you can view traffic conditions, a satellite view and all the restaurants along the way. This is fun but not particularly practical if you're trying to drive. The screen is big by phone standards, but compared to the newest, stand-alone GPS units, it's tiny.

Continue reading "Testing Google Versus Standalone Navigation Systems" >

Nintendo's 'Brain Age 2' is one of several games that promote mental exercises purported to make the brain more agile and fit. (Nintendo of America)

By Omar L. Gallaga

This week's All Tech Considered is about a group of Wii Sports bowlers and about technology that is being geared toward the elderly. Games like Brain Age 2 have been part of a wave of products that have widened the audience for gaming and are purportedly therapeutic to stimulate the brain. (Much research is being done in this area and so far the findings are less than conclusive.)

More items related to the piece:

• From Japan, robots assisting the elderly including one unwisely named "HAL." (We'll be posting more about this soon).
• Even more on robots and seniors.
• The benefits of home health monitoring.
• Skepticism about whether video games really slow mental decline.
• Some of the innovations for young and old from this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
• Using cheap sensors to help prevent falls.
• The Jitterbug and the Presto are two devices aimed at simplifying technology for older age groups.

By Shereen Meraji

Japan is making headway in the arena of robotic elderly care. That's not taking care of rusty robots, but robots taking care of senior citizens.

Because Japan's population is aging faster than it's reproducing, there aren't enough people to provide geriatric care. Researchers and scientists are hoping to stem the manpower shortage by substituting humans with robots.

So what's in development?

A robot that will help read e-mail and surf the Internet for seniors who can no longer type or see their computer screen; a robotic nurse that can lift the feeble, and a robotic suit named HAL (for Hybrid Assisted Lymb) that may help seniors, who can barely walk, regain mobility.

What's coming soon to a mall near you?

Paro, a robotic seal designed to stimulate lonely senior citizens who lack human contact and can no longer care for a real pet.

And what are the downsides, you ask?

One: These are robots, not humans! Imagine leaving your grandparent in the care of a feeling-less machine.

Two: They're expensive. The robotic seal is nearly 4000 bucks.

Three: Naming something after the 13th greatest film villain of all time is never a good move.

If you're like me and are fascinated by robots, check out this Current TV documentary: Robot Nation.

By Wright Bryan

Google took the wraps off of its Chrome OS project on Thursday when it released the unfinished code to the public with the announcement of the Chromium open source project.

When it's finished in about a year (timeline according to Google), the project will result in a computer operating system that marries the Linux kernel to Google's Chrome Web browser. The new open-source OS will only run Web applications. Data will be stored in the "cloud." Local memory will be used for caching data, not storing it permanently.

It's a focused vision from Google:

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Google says this approach -- making the browser the only real application running on the computer -- will make start-up times blazingly fast, simplify the user experience by focusing on the one app people use all the time and up the level of security for your device and data.

Continue reading "Google Outlines Chrome OS Project Focused On Speed, Simplicity, Security" >

Bloggers worm their way into Apple and reveal company secrets. (iStockphoto.com)

By Katia Dunn

I was talking with my brother, Colin, the other day about what kind of news he reads. He's 20 and in his second year of design school at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He's also a real smarty-pants and, in my opinion, the arbiter of all things cool and of the future.

He pointed me to one of his favorite Web sites, Daring Fireball. It's devoted almost exclusively to Apple industry news. The site is run by John Gruber, who is, according to Colin, one of the most accomplished bloggers on the topic of Apple. I was surprised that one company could sustain a daily blog. As it happens, Daringfireball.net isn't alone. There are several Apple-devoted sites. Some of them employ whole teams of people who spend their days reporting on the company. And, when I say reporting, I mean impressive investigative journalism. More on that in my story I'm working on for All Things Considered.

At the moment, these Apple-devoted bloggers are focused largely on one product: the Apple Tablet, a device supposedly meant to compete with the Kindle. Over at the Boy Genius Report (aka BGR), a site devoted to mobile devices, the much-rumored tablet has been compared to a religious icon.

The tablet is the holy grail right now. We know everything and we know nothing. It could be anything from a six-inch device to a 10-inch device. It could be an actual computer, it could be a large iPod. The whole thing is just misunderstood at this point. And that's what Apple wants

Apple is known for being secretive, and they've no doubt been irritated by past industry leaks to blogs. On the other hand, the speculation and anticipation that these blogs generate is ultimately good press for the company.

The other thing I've been thinking about while reporting this story is how these blogs reflect the changing craft of journalism. There's been a lot of talk about journalism becoming "hyper-local," meaning mainstream media organizations will die and small, local organizations will thrive. But, as my editor Marilyn Geewax said today, "niche is the new local." News consumers of the future might spend equal amounts of time checking NYTimes.com for the latest on President Obama's trip to China and Mac Rumors to see if iTunes media synchronization is still missing its latest updates. In fact, I'm pretty sure Colin's already doing that.

By Omar L. Gallaga

We'd been speculating for a while what Microsoft retail stores might be like before they finally opened last month.

It turns out the truth was more horrifying than any fiction we could have made up (which I did). Employees in the video below are shown line dancing at a Mission Viejo, Calif., store. You can tell from the excessive visual data of their body language that some are happier to be participating than others. And you have to wonder how many copies of "Windows 7" the dancing sold.

I've said before that Microsoft's marketing often seems tone-deaf. Add dancing to the mix and you've got a lethal cocktail:

(Hat tip to Engadget for this remarkable find.)