Google Mobile App for iPhone Updated With "Bells and Whistles"

The Google Mobile App for iPhone has been updated with several enhancements. The app actually showed up on Wednesday night in the App Store, but as with most app approvals, Google didn't find out until later and posted about the new version on Thursday.

In terms of changes, the visual tweaks settings section in the options known as "Bells and Whistles" has been "exposed." You could reveal the hidden section (really, an Easter Egg) by perseverance, but now it's there for all to see. You can change visual styles, and if you want, on an iPhone 3GS, turn on a setting that shows a moving waveform when you search by voice. As Google suggests, don't try this with a slower iPhone.

Also, search results open directly in the Google Mobile App now, not in Safari. You can switch to safari if you want, but as Google says, "This will get you to what you need faster, which is always our goal at Google." They're not necessarily picking at Safari, though they could if they want.

Additionally, Voice Search adds accents and languages. Not only are Mandarin and Japanese supported, but if you talk like an Aussie, for example, Voice Search can handle it.

Of course, the Google app that many would love to see on the iPhone is still MIA. That is, of course, Google Voice. Who knows if it will ever show up, and although it's possible to use it within the browser or on a jailbroken iPhone, it would be great to see an official app.

AT&T To Introduce Tiered Wireless Data Pricing

Some ISPs are trying tiered broadband pricing, but AT&T is looking into tiered wireless pricing. While not being up front about issues caused by the data-hogging app phone, AT&T seems to be realizing that it really, really wants iPhone users to use less bandwidth, at least in the short term.

After all, it recently released an iPhone app designed to make it easy for users to report outages and dropped calls. It's also "normal" for an iPhone to drop 30 percent of its calls in New York City. It is quite obvious that the network simply cannot handle all the traffic (and we don't need Verizon ads to tell us that).

It's true that voice plans are tiered for all carriers. It's also fact that as a relative data hog, the iPhone is unique. Its users grab far more data than traditional smartphone users, yet still have a $30 all-you-can-eat data plan. When AT&T sells a plan for its wireless-data cards, those are limited to 5GB of usage monthly. After that, customers are charged more based on their usage.

Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's wireless head, announced at an investor conference in New York City on Wednesday that AT&T plans to introduce new pricing for heavy wireless-data users. In other words, look out iPhone users. Small wonder that AT&T has still not offered tethering for its iPhones, right?

De la Vega said 3 percent of smartphone users consume 40 percent of AT&T's network capacity. Unsurprisingly, this sounds like the same sort of argument that Comcast and other ISPs have made in terms of throttling or "network optimization" when bottlenecks occur on their services. According to AT&T, most of the bandwidth is being consumed by streaming-video and audio applications, such as Internet radio.

It should be interesting to watch the reaction of users on this. Unfortunately for iPhone users, AT&T currently has iPhone exclusivity, so if they do not like what AT&T proposes, they cannot do anything about it, unless they want to switch to a different phone.

This isn't the first time that AT&T has pointed to smartphones as the reason for its network issues. To be honest, despite clamoring for the iPhone to move to the Verizon network, it is unclear if that CDMA network could handle the workload any easier than AT&T's. Perhaps after Android phones have been around on Verizon's network for a while we might have a better feel for that.

It's also unclear what users will think when they discover how a Verizon iPhone would be even more limited in terms of processes that can be run simultaneously than the AT&T version. While background processing does not exist (for the most part) on the iPhone, you can't even make a data connection while on a voice call on Verizon's CDMA network, because of a limitation of the technology.

Google Chrome Browser Extensions Go Live (And Beta)

Google's On Tuesday, the same day that one highly Google Chrome request was satisfied (meaning a Mac OS X version, though in beta), Google opened it's Chrome Extensions Gallery. This means the public can now have access to what will hopefully be a myriad of extensions, just as with Firefox. Right now, however, there are only slightly more than 300.

In order to use them, you need to use the developer version or (as they like to call it) the non-stable version of Google Chrome. It's also not quite ready for the Mac just yet. It is ready for Linux (as well, of course, as Windows).

This is what many users have been waiting for. There are so many Firefox extensions, that so many are addicted to, they have said (like me) that they would not change browsers without comparable extensions.

For me, I have a few requirements. First, an ad blocker. It seems that even though Google is king of online ads, there are even some ad blocking extensions in the Gallery. One of them, however, Adblock, which sounds very similar to the popular Firefox ad blocking extension, requires access to your Flickr account. Uh, why? Another, Adsweep, doesn't work when you download from the Chrome Extensions Gallery. It does when you download from the developer's own site, though. However, I went with AdThwart, mostly because of the reviews. It also uses EasyList for ad blocking, like Adblock Plus on Firefox.

There are two other things I really want in terms of Firefox extensions that I can find substitutes for, but not exact ones: TabMixPlus and Roboform. The only alternative to Roboform is LastPass, which works decently well, but has some issues with some of the sites I use.

Meanwhile, instead of TabMixPlus, which will allow multi-line tabs in Firefox, there is TooManyTabs. Still in pre-release and not on the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery yet. In Firefox, TooManyTabs simply adds a toolbar of tabbed sites that have been removed from memory, but are easily accessible by hitting the tab in the TooManyTabs toolbar. In Chrome, instead, TooManyTabs brings up a pane that shows the open tabs and allows you to move them to a sidebar where they are suspended. Honestly, that's a better system than in Firefox. The pane shows bitmaps of the current pages (a little buggy for now) and a red arrow shows the tab you are in.

Obviously, I am not the be-all-and-end-all of Firefox extension users, but the question you are probably wanting to ask is if I will change to Chrome? The answer is a muted yes. I would prefer to have Roboform to LastPass, but for now I will use LastPass (Roboform is supposed to be on the way).

There is, of course, a concern. Not all the Chrome extensions are written by the same developer(s) as the Firefox version, and some of them may start a project, and then give it up. In fact, this appears to be the case with AdSweep. That could be an issue in the future.

However, Firefox 3.5 crashes daily for me. I'm not the only one, as a Google search will show, and the error is the same as I see: a Visual C++ Runtime Library crash. I've grown weary of it, and realistically, Chrome is so much faster. So for now, anyway, I am switching to Chrome.

Seagate Launches Its First SSD

Seagate, late to the game because they were studying the segment, has announced its first Enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs). It's not too late for it to enter the market, but other companies do have a significant lead on it in the SSD market.

These are definitely Enterprise-class. Rather than the more consumer-oriented (and cheaper) MLC technology used by many, the company is using SLC technology in its new Pulsar line (SLC = single-level cell, MLC = multi-level cell; more on this later). SLC drives cost significantly more than MLC drives.

The Pulsar will offer up to 240MB/sec. sequential read speeds and 200MB/sec. sequential write speeds. Peak performance will be up to 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS, according to Seagate. The drive will have a five-year limited warranty.

In an SLC SSD, such as the Pulsar, 1 bit rests within 1 storage cell of the SSD. Conversely, an MLC SSD stacks the storage cells in the SSD, so there are multiple bits within 1 cell of the SSD. This means that an MLC drive is slower, and less reliable than an SLC drive. It also means, however, it is much cheaper as the storage capacity of the SSD increases (increased density). Thus, most consumer SSDs are MLC drives.

At this point, however, Seagate is focusing on the most reliable technology rather than the most dense. Reliability is "job one" in an enterprise drive, whether it be a mechanical hard drive or an SSD.

Seagate's not concerned about trailing other manufacturers. They are probably right, too. As the leader among mechanical hard drive OEMs, they are always mentioned when a purchase is to be made. Additionally, the SSD market is still relatively new. What Seagate needs to do is not repeat the mistakes of other drive manufacturers, including Intel, who released buggy firmware for their drives. They'd also better make sure these drives support TRIM out of the box, the Windows 7 feature for SSDs that prevents performance degradation.