ForcaTech Blog

For those unfamiliar HumbleBundle.com periodically offers a collection of games at a price you can choose yourself. You have the option of how much of the money you pay goes towards the game developers, charities, the website, etc. Their most recent deal includes support for the Android platform meaning any of the games you purchase through this humble bundle are playable on Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android.

At the time of this posting for around $6 you get 4 cross-platform games but for $60 worth of games I would encourage all to give what they can. [HumbleBundle]

Those of us who use the internet now-a-days have grown accustomed to the fact that when we go to google.com we may not see the standard ‘Google’ logo above the search field. Google from time to time–whether for advertising purposes or to pay recognize recent events, anniversaries, holidays, etc–has changed up their logo with a Jack-o-lantern, snowman, etc. When the Google logo is non-standard like this they call them “doodles”.

These Google doodles have all been pretty static–until now. Today those of you who pulled up Google to type in a quick search probably said “Oh, a new Google logo I wonder what this one is for.” It wasn’t until I went to mouse over the logo to see exactly what the occasion was when I was surprised to see the logo begin to move like the classic Pac Man that we all know and love.

Initially I sat and watched assuming it was some kind of flash image. It wasn’t until Pac Man got eaten by one of the ghosts that I realized that I might actually be in control. For the next life I realized that it was in fact a playable game! Using the arrow keys on the keyboard I was actually able to play the game just like any other Pac Man game.

The interactive doodle is in fact a full 255 level game with the 256 level kill screen(I got close – level 3)–just like the original. Today’s doodle the first interactive doodle for Google. Marcin Wichary, a senior user experience designer for Google, worked with a member of the “Google Doodler Team”(this is what I want to be when I grow up) to create this unique doodle. [Google]

Despite my feeble attempts to summarize what Google Wave is and what it is capable of I have still been asked by several people, “so what IS google wave exactly?”

Instead of attempting to explain it again I will let this guy–who does an excellent job!

After months of rumors it looks like ATT has finally decided to roll out their femtocells in a soft launch to a few markets. Those markets include Atlanta, San Antonio, Seattle and a city or two in North Carolina.

What is a femtocell? It is a device used to extend your wireless/3G range. If you live in an area where the reception is bad then you can pick up one of these devices, hook it up to your home internet connection and get a beautifully strong 3G connection.

While this is great and all, you are having to plug this into your router, which is most likely a wireless router…. which will give you a better connection over WiFi than you will get over the femtocell 3G. Now all phones don’t have WiFi capabilities and so this is a big perk for the 3 nation wide customers few ATT customers who have a data plan with a phone that doesn’t have WiFi built in.

This should help alleviate some of the 3G load and make it a little more reliable and snappy but since the majority of 3G is eaten by iPhone users and the femtocell doesn’t really help to get iPhone users off 3G I foresee the improvements being minimal. [BGR]

AT&T has announced that they will be rolling out their 7.2Mbps HSPA 3G this year to a few markets. T-Mobile is now claiming that they will do the same–maybe they will start by rolling standard 3G out to more markets, we are still without 3G for T-Mobile where I live.

So, where do we go from here? Most carriers will soon be talking about their 4G networks however, T-Mobile is boasting their super-boosted 3G rocking out at 21Mbps.

While most carriers are doing the smart thing and dropping 3G at the 7.2Mbps barrier and moving up to 4G, T-Mobile is going to use and abuse the 3G network for as long as they can. They claim that they will be able to reach near 4G speeds in 2010. [mocoNews]

After 7 years of drafts and buggy hardware the IEEE alliance has finally settled on a standard. They hope to begin pushing out hardware with the official Wireless N logo on it in the second half of October. The previous standard was Wireless G rated at 54Mbps while the new Wireless N standard is rated at 300Mbps.

Well, the bad news is that the majority of you are going to have to continue to deal with what you have got. But, if you live in the Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, or Miami area then you are in luck.  AT&T has announced that  by the end of this year the HSPA 7.2 network will be up and running in those areas. They claim that by the end of 2010, 19 other major markets will have HSPA available and by the end of 2011 the remaining 3G footprint will be upgraded.

Some of you have probably already noticed the 3G+ symbol on your compatible device–such as the iPhone 3GS–meaning that you are already experiencing from the “7.2Mbps” network.

There is still good news for the rest of you. Because these 3G traffic areas are moving off the old 3G network many of you will probably notice improvements in your 3G network.

This may look like the command center of a giant space station but it is in fact my future basement the Global Network Operations Center for AT&T in NJ. This is where all of the magic is made. When you make a call, and you experience the 15 seconds of silence you may think means your phone isn’t connecting to the network, but what is really happening is the call has popped up on the main screen for the employees at AT&T to decide whether or not this call will be permitted to pass through.

Seriously though, AT&T is working on increasing their network. Between streaming music and videos, browsing the web, and downloading applications. iPhone users consume way more bandwidth than the standard smartphone user. This causes a real strain on the AT&T network, not just for data. Large cities are hit particularly hard during peak times when users are most likely to be on the phone texting, or using data.

Over the next year AT&T plans to spend the majority of their $18 billion budget on upgrading and expanding to meet the demands of the 3G network. They will also be erecting an additional 2,100 cell towers across the nation. Additional upgrades include adding fiber optic connectivity to increase the speed of data delivery.

In the more immediate future AT&T/Apple has announced that the long awaited iPhone MMS is due via a software upgrade on the 25th of this month, just a few weeks away. Now iPhone users can enjoy the luxury of snapping a photo or video (for 3GS users), and texting it to their friends.

Now when will we be seeing tethering?

Not much more to say. The Gmail servers have been down for almost 10 minutes now. The internet giant who has an endless supply of microwave corn dogs money, servers, satellites, and ideas has had a server error.

What this really means we are unsure but there are very few possibilities.

[UPDATE]: Well after over an hour of being down it looks like things are back up and running. Looks like we are all going to be ok this time.

Repeat after me:  No unlimited data plan with Verizon is a good thing. This is what Verizon is going to be  trying to convince all of their mind controlled zombies customers come September 8th–maybe.

Verizon will have a new classification of phone beginning in a week as well–”Enhanced Multimedia Phones”. Those phones will be required to pay for either the $9.99 or $19.99 per month data plans–much like how the red giant requires Blackberry devices to have a data plan.

What constitutes a phone being described as an Enhanced Multimedia Phone you ask? It has to have an HTML Web browser, EV-DO Rev. A, a QWERTY keypad, and it must launch on or after September 8th. If it doesn’t meet ALL of those requirements then it doesn’t qualify and won’t have the data plan forced upon it.

While the Omnia 2 doesn’t classify as a EMP we probably still won’t be seeing it until after this data plan switch. And what about the unlimited data plans? Will they be available for other phones? We sure hope so but it sounds like it has been thrown out the window. This will be a good change for people who occasionally check their email or browse every now and then but for power users who are constantly on the internet or who tether their phone to their laptop for internet this could be really expensive if the unlimited plan is completely done away with. [BGR]

That is probably what this fellow in The-Middle-Of-No-Where, Chad, Africa thought as he looked up to the sky just as the Google Satellites took a snap shot of him. And with good reason apparently. This is one of the areas of the world that allow you to super zoom in with Google Maps. To see this location for yourself visit Google Maps here.

Why this location is candidate for being super zoom-in-able I have no idea. Not very interesting if you ask me.

This reminds me of a video I saw of a picture taken by satellite. It started as a picture of the whole globe and slowly zoomed in to the US, then to a State, then to a City, then to a street, then to a bus and then into the bus so close that you could read the heading of the newspaper a man was reading.

Does anyone know where I can find this video? If I ever find it then it will be up here.

Those of you who are avid Pandora users have no doubt had all of your hopes and dreams crushed recently. Pandora is now forcing Pandora One down your throat heavily advertising for their paid subscription service Pandora One. While I agree it is a little more than annoying that we Pandora members, who have been listening to the site since it first started up, are now limited to 40 hours a month; however, I can understand that they have their own costs to cover.

In the past you were also able to just go to pandora and listen without an account. Now you have to register and login to listen to music so that they can track your every move limit everyone to 40 hours.

I thought I would beat the system and create another account when I initially ran out of my 40 hours, but no dice. Pandora not only limits your account but also limits each computer.

You will notice a new drop down when you first sign up for Pandora One. One of the cool features of upgrading is the slim “Pandora Mini”. Its basically just takes everything off the web page except for the center area where the music is.

As soon as you get to 30-35 hours you will begin to notice a bar at the top of the screen warning you that you are about to run out of sweet, free listening time. Once you hit 40 hours BOOM. You’re done.

If you want to continue listening you have to pay $0.99 for the next month or $36/year to upgrade to Pandora One.

With Pandora One you also get a slim yet spiffy Pandora desktop application that allows you to listen to Pandora without a need to use your browser at all. This, in and of itself, is really cool. If you have a firefox update, accidentally close your whole browser instead of that one tab or have no reason to have a browser window open you can still listen to your  music uninterrupted. Whenever the next song comes on there is a little overlay that pops up in the top right corner of your screen to let you see the Artist, Song, Album, and Album cover.

You also get high quality streaming audio. Instead of the 128Kbps default you have the option of listening to 192Kbps instead. We tested this feature out on some $10 cheap desktop speakers and also on a higher end setup and on both we could tell a quality difference when switching between the two. It obviously wasn’t as noticeable with the cheaper speakers so if you don’t have a nice audio set up this wouldn’t be a selling point for Pandora One.

When you upgrade you also have the option to apply custom skins to your in-browser Pandora. Which is cool, but again, not a selling point.

Some other perks that are worth the money–if you listen to 40hrs+ of Pandora each month–is that you have unlimited listening and no audio or visual ads. Your idle time out before it asks “are you still there?” is bumped up from 2 hours to 5 hours. As long as you skip a song, rate a song or click on anything else on the Pandora site you won’t timeout and will have uninterrupted music.

Honestly, there aren’t a ton of features available for Pandora One but if you are someone who listens to Pandora often then I say it is worth it. The desktop application is pretty slim but allows you to add new stations, select the one you want to listen to, rate, skip and adjust volume. The real selling point with Pandora One is if you run our of your 40 free hours. All of the other features are nice, but just perks to having the unlimited music and no ads.

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[UPDATE]: Users have been reporting that when using any build of Windows Mobile 6.5 they experience a time out after a few songs. No word as to what exactly is causing this–and we don’t have any other details and haven’t verified–but we have contacted Pandora support to see if they are aware and have started doing any kind of troubleshooting. This is definitely something wrong with WinMo 6.5 specifically since users who experience this problem can move back to 6.1 and the issue is resolved. It would be a smart move by Pandora to look into this and set a goal to get a work around  for their App finished around or before the unknown 6.5 release date. We will update you with any additional info.

This interesting survey performed by the American Time Use Survey shows how the majority of people in the US spend their day. Using the interactive graph you can change the demographic to show information based on age, employment status, etc. Check the NYTimes website to see the graph.

Still just a rumor for now but a believable one. MultiChannel is saying that we could expect to see iPhone and iTouch apps allowing you to watch your Netflix movies and tv over Wi-Fi as well as on the Wii.

MultiChannel is presenting it as fact but we are hesitant to believe that this is all coming to fruition in the future.

Not much info out about this currently but BPL(Broadband Over Power Lines) is now one step closer to being available in our neighborhoods. An IEEE working group has released the first test specs of a BPL standard and are working on developing it now.

It is probably still a ways off but it will be exciting when we begin to see 100MB plans from a BPL provider that will compete with our cable and DSL company plans.

The Google Voice iPhone app gave users the ability to use some advanced features of Google Voice right from their phone as well as call out using their Google Voice number. Earlier this week Apple/ATT disabled the App claiming that it imitated some of the functions of the iPhone.

Now the FCC is trying to find out why things happened the way they did. The FCC has sent letters to Apple, ATT and Google asking for details.

You can see those letters here at TechCruch.

ATT has been the first to respond saying that they have nothing to do with the App store and will “of course” respond to the FCC letter anyway.

This morning we got our invites to the Google Wave Developer Preview so that we could begin to work on some apps for Joomla and WP. Nearly boiling over with excitement I got to my computer where I could get to my email and login. I pulled up firefox and boom. There I was in the Google Wave Developer Preview. After staring at it for a minute I moved my mouse and clicked on one of the open developer waves(threads). BAM. Error, Error, Error.

What can you expect right? It is the developer preview and this early in developement. This is more than acceptable right now. I spoke with some of the other developers and was told I would have better luck in Chrome. After pulling up Wave in Chrome the experience was much more enjoyable.

Currently Wave only supports the following browsers:

You have the option of using IE if you want but our experience with Wave and IE was terrible. Personally I wouldn’t mind if it stayed that way. I have never been a fan of IE and now that Microsoft is openly trying to make advances over google with Bing and now partnering with Yahoo to “create the future of search” I think it would be just fine if Google decided to say “hey, Wave works great in our browser! If you want our users to be able to use your browser then make it work with our program.”

Now on to Wave itself. The default layout when you open Wave has your Navigation menu on the left with Inbox, Trash, By Me, Spam, etc. Below that are your contacts. In the middle area you have a list of any Google waves that you have started or have been invited to by order of most recently commented on in real time. From here you can see which ones have been commented on since you left, how many responses there have been that you haven’t looked at yet, other people that are part of the wave and even see what text people are typing in as they type.

When you clikc on a wave it will open to the right and you can scroll through all of the text that has been entered. You can even see text from everyone else that is commenting at the moment in real time.

One cool part of the interface that makes it very intuitive is the ability to minimize any and all of the windows or move them around. You can even click on the minimize button on the navigation and contact menus. Everything that you minimize will appear at the top of the window. While they are there you can click on one to see a mini view of the wave to check on the updates or you can move it back down to the main window.

Here is something else that caught our attention when we first began using our Wave mail:

With standard gMail accounts you are currently given 7352 MB–and counting! With our Google Wave email account we had 25,600 MB. This could just be a perk to being in the developer preview so don’t get too excited just yet however there probably will be a need for more space when using Wave and so I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if all Wave accounts started with 25 GB of space.

We will update when we begin to develop apps.

This morning Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they will be merging in order to acquire the “resources to create the future of search”, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

This seems strange since Microsoft just came out with their search enging which they are spending $100 million dollars. Possibly this was to scare Yahoo! into merging with Microsoft or to show Y! that they could pull off a search engine.

I will be interested to see how this turns out since we don’t have many details at the moment. What we do know is that Microsoft and Yahoo! are making it very clear that they are only partnering up in the search and releated ads area of their business. [CNET]

This morning just a few minutes ago I just received an email confirming that I was still interesetd in participating in the Google Wave sandbox. The email said that if I was to fill out a form and I would receive my account details within the next few days.

Whoo hoo! For those of you behind and not familiar with Google Wave watch this hour and 20 minute long video.

Go ahead that to do list can wait.

The Google Wave beta–which is sure to be in beta for 15+ years since gmail took 5–will be released to 100,000 individuals on September 30th. If you are interested in getting access to the beta you need to “let Google know where to contact you”–as if they don’t already know!

Back in 2005 GrandCentral was started as a solution for people who have several numbers by giving you one main phone number. When someone called your GrandCentral number all of the other phones that you had would ring.

Now, Google has bought them out and added lots of new features. Here are some of the great features of having Google Voice.

When you sign up(get an invite) for Google Voice you get to choose one free number to use as your main number.

You can sync your google contacts(from your gmail, etc) and change ringing and voicemail rules for each individual contact. For example if you were tired of Ted calling you every morning at 6am to go to the gym then you can set it up so that when he calls you it goes straight to your voicemail instead of ringing your phone first. Or you can record him a special message pretending to be Pizza Hut or telling him to never call you again or else he will come back from the gym and find a pile of ash where his house used to be. I don’t think I will ever have the time to go in and record custom voicemail messages for every–or even several–of the contacts in my contact directory but having the ability to do so is cool!

Another feature that is potentially annoying cool is call screening. You can require people who call you to leave their name first so you can decide if you want to listen or not. If you don’t remember who Hammond is then you can wait for him to begin leaving a voicemail and listen in as he leaves the message and cut in and begin talking to him if you would like.

If not wait for him to leave the voicemail which you can later access and listen to online.

A big feature that Google has introduced is the voicemail to text. You can receive your voicemails in text format now via email or text message so you don’t even have to listen to the message to see what your arch nemesis friend said.

You can also set your text messages up to be recorded and sent online. That way in case you accidentally deleted an important text you can go online and find it. Or if you accidentally drop your phone in the toilet sink again you will still be able to send out that important text message.

When someone calls any of your phone numbers you have complete control over which phones they ring, how they ring, if it goes straight to voicemail, if it goes to voicemail but they hear it ringing on their phone as well as which voicemail it goes to.

If you have one main phone number that you give to everyone you can have it ring your cell if it is your friend, ring someone elses cell if it isn’t, ring your home phone only between 4pm and 7pm, etc.

The best part is this is all free. The only thing you will have to pay for is additional phone numbers and international calls(a few cents per minute to most places).

One problem is your outgoing caller ID is still going to show your cell phone number. Google is putting together a work around but for the time being if you have a Android phone or Blackberry(iPhone app is in the works) you are in luck. You can download a Google Voice app that allows you to dial through your Google Voice number.

I have also heard of a rumor that IF YOU ARE USING THE PHONE APPLICATION(currently only available on Blackberry and Android phones) you can get unlimited free phone calls with those phone carriers that allow you to choose your “inner circle” of friends or family that are always free. T-mobile and Verizon are two companies like this. Add Google’s phone number to your “in” group and then always use your Google Voice number to receive and make phone calls.

Now there are several reasons why I see this not working. One, even if Google Voice is just a simple forward more than likely Google Voice won’t just use one phone number to use to access your phone. Two, T-mobile and Verizon have blacklists of phone numbers that can’t be in your inner circle for this very reason. If they haven’t already I am sure it is only a matter of time before they will add Googles block of numbers to that blacklist. Finally, even when you are talking to the people in your “in” group your minutes still add up. If you are on a 700 minute plan and make 700 minutes worth of  “in” phone calls you are now out of free minutes to use to call other people. If you make 700 minutes of calls to non-free numbers then start calling your in group you will be fine.

On the other hand if some how the Google service is on the trunk level then it may not even be viewed as a call by your provider and you have yourself a big win of free minutes.

Once again I have to say it. This is just one step closer to Google’s total world domination.