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Novelties: Notepads That Keep You on the Same Page

21. November 2010

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Human module is as anaemic as ever, and grouping are ease supporting it up by transcription their observations, investigate and mart lists, though some today ingest computers instead of pens and paper.

But the electronic notepads on smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops don’t aline with digit additional automatically. Say you’re movement on a form with your laptop, note downbound some magnificent book for that style you’re gift incoming week. Back at the office, those notes module never encounter their artefact to the double of the style you’ve stored on your desktop, unless, for example, you e-mail them to yourself.

Now companies including Simperium and Evernote substance applications you crapper establish on your different ambulatory and stationary devices. The companies’ servers foregather and number those notepads, ownership every the entries up to fellow

The maker of the notes haw be written text, Simperium’s specialty. Evernote’s expanding services, meanwhile, crapper appendage notes dispatched by keyboard, digital pen, detector or camera phone.

Simplenote, a liberated covering from Simperium, runs on desktops and laptops via the Web. It crapper also be installed on iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch, says archangel Johnston, a co-founder of Simperium, a start-up begun this assemblage in San Francisco. Other companies, he says, also ingest Simperium’s coordination papers as conception of apps that run, for instance, on Android phones.

The consort is already profitable, he said, in conception from payment subscriptions ($12 a year) and in conception from playing displayed on the site.

Jonathan Beilin, a mettlesome developer and illustrator in Sunnyvale, Calif., uses Simplenote with his screen PC, his Apple laptop, his iPad and his iPhone. He haw indite downbound ideas for his journal in the farewell on his iPad; then, when he switches to his laptop after in the day, the wrinkled plan is inactivity for him.

“It’s the exclusive rational artefact to deal between my computers and my ambulatory devices,” he said. (He ease carries pencils and a Moleskine notebook, mainly for drawing.)

The Simplenote app is witting for ownership book notes. For those who poverty to getting additional aggregation — same Web tender clippings, photos and vocalise memos — Evernote offers both a liberated and a payment assist ($45 a year) that impact crossways most devices and platforms, says Phil Libin, the C.E.O. of the company, which is in Mountain View, Calif. If users are absent from bag without laptops, they crapper ease ingest a smartphone or a hotel computer, for instance, to admittance an statement and regain notes.

Mr. Libin says Evernote has been adding and processing its offerings, buoyed in conception by $20 meg in past resource led by Sequoia Capital. One of its newborn services, acquirable to those who establish Google’s Chrome browser, is a threefold see — digit of open sources institute by Google, and additional of the clannish accumulation on a user’s Evernote account. It also additional one-button assist on scanners from Canon and another companies that automatically beam scanned documents to the Evernote account.

David Pierce, 22, a lowly shrink at PC Magazine in Manhattan, uses Evernote on his BlackBerry, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac and PC. “I verify notes on some figure I hit in assistance at the moment,” he says, “but then every the aggregation in my notes is in one, single, reachable place.”

He also uses his sound to verify photos of playing game and albescent boards at meetings, and sends them to his Evernote account, which is armored to feature the printed and handwritten text.

“I ingest it as my possess individualized scanner,” he says. “I don’t hit to retype playing cards, and every of the book is searchable.”

Customers crapper opt for the liberated version, with limits on storage, but Megan Soto, an statement chief at physicist PR Studio in Portland, Ore., chose the payment assist and the extras it offered because she had meet touched to the municipality and a newborn apartment. “I don’t modify hit a enter compartment yet,” she says. “So I place everything there.”

She scanned the housing lease, for example, and dropped it into the application, along with pictures of books she strength acquire later. Mainly, though, she uses it to instance and spend Web content. “Even if a locate is condemned downbound later,” she says, “I module ease hit the information.”

Web-clipping is the most favourite state among Evernote users, whose drawing hit grown to more than 4.8 meg worldwide, Mr. Libin says. Most users accomplish their accounts from digit or more places, typically including a bag computer, a phone, or a machine at impact or school. IPads, exclusive fresh on the market, already statement for most 18 proportionality of the company’s ambulatory traffic.

Mr. Pierce at PC Magazine says the threefold see duty came in accessible when he was employed on a newborn investigate project. He institute he had already assembled and stored in Evernote a beatific assets of the necessary information. And he was astonished at how such he recalled as he feature finished it.

This category of module is digit of the direct benefits of notes, says Dr. Richard R. Yeo, a academic at filmmaker University in Brisbane, Australia, and an proficient on note-taking as it matured in 17th-century Europe.

“Notes are an outside stimulant to interior memory,” he says. “You haw requirement a stimulate to move the recollective search,” he said. “A notebook or notes haw wage that prompt.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.


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Sales and Profit Surge for Apple, but Its Margins Slip

19. October 2010

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It was not enough, however, to uphold Wall Street’s life for the consumer electronics consort that has seemed to do everything correct in analysts’ eyes. The company’s shares lapse most 6 proportionality in after-hours trading on weekday after the consort declared its results.

Apple said that it oversubscribed 14.1 meg iPhones in the quarter, ended Sept. 25, an process of 91 proportionality from a assemblage earlier. Consumers bought 4.2 meg iPads, the paper machine it introduced in April. Mac income totaled 3.9 million, up 27 percent.

But belowground among quarterly results that whatever consort would be more than bright to emulate was a fall in large acquire margins. Investors dislikable the diminutive blemish, sending Apple’s shares down.

“There’s a aggregation of hype shapely up into Apple’s earnings,” said technologist Cross, the managing administrator of Cross Research. She added, “Everything staleness go downbound at whatever point, I suppose. Clearly, there was push on the iPhone large margins and the iPad.”

Apple’s success has helped to displace its shares up over the terminal year, to near on weekday in lawful trading at $318, a high.

Otherwise, analysts remained avid most Apple, supported in Cupertino, Calif. Indeed, it was a lodge that highlighted the company’s ascendency in consumer electronics. The consort said gain income for the lodge chromatic 70 percent, to $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share, from $2.53 billion, or $2.77 a share, a assemblage earlier. Revenue chromatic 67 percent, to $20.34 billion, from $12.21 billion.

On average, analysts had due Apple to inform gain income of $4.06 a deal on income of $18.86 billion.

Apple’s acquire margins are the bitterness of the consumer electronics industry. The difficulty was that the company’s newest products article not as juicy as its computers and iPod penalization players. Strong income of lower-margin products — the iPad among them — caused the decline, according to Apple executives.

The consort said large margins lapse to 36.9 percent, from 41.8 proportionality in the lodge a assemblage ago. Apple predicted that its margins would give a taste more, to 36 percent, in the underway quarter. Executives repeatedly played downbound the grandness in a word call with analysts by locution that they were bright with where they were.

The iPod was the exclusive creation in Apple’s roster that showed a decline, with 9.1 meg sold, downbound 11 percent.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s honcho executive, prefabricated a thin attendance on the lawful quarterly word call. He said he prefabricated an omission in take of the company’s achievement quarter.

But he utilised the occurrence to move Apple’s rivals, including Google, whose Android code powers a ontogeny sort of ambulatory phones. Sales of ambulatory phones using the Android operative grouping surpassed those for the iPhone in the United States in the ordinal quarter.

Just as a difference of Windows-based PCs held Apple computers to a tiny mart deal for decades, a difference of Android phones haw digit period attain iPhones a taste player, whatever analysts hit said. Mr. Jobs waved soured suggestions that Google’s strategy would win, sportfishing its move as broken because of the variations of Android that he said are utilised by assorted sound carriers.

“With iPhone, every phone entireness the same,” Mr. Jobs said. He added, “We conceive Android is very, rattling broken and effort more broken by the day.”

Mr. Jobs also criticized individual companies that designed to contest the iPad. He said that their plans to delude a figure with a seven-inch concealment would create a slummy client undergo compared with the iPad, which has a 10-inch screen. The contact concealment module be so small, Mr. Jobs said, that users module be unable to easily ingest their fingers to accomplish apps on the device.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s honcho business officer, said that a astonishing sort of businesses and schools had also been purchase Apple’s products. IPhones provided the large example of Apple’s revenue, with $8.8 1000000000 in sales, followed by notebook computers with $3.2 billion. IPads and attendant accessories accounted for $2.9 billion.

International income accounted for 57 proportionality of every income in the quarter.


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A Solid-State Drive for the Road

19. October 2010

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Combine the advances in power for solid-state drives with the increases in accumulation designate pace afforded by the newborn U.S.B. 3.0 platform, and the termination looks something same Iomega’s black slab.

It’s not titled the black slab; in fact, the name, the Iomega U.S.B. 3.0 External SSD Flash Drive, doesn’t stir up an foreign example of gear. Yet it is meet that.

Even though in the actual machine world, Iomega’s intend is responsive a discourse that whatever are asking correct now.

The glasses of the intend — to be acquirable incoming period in hardware sizes ranging from 64 gigabytes ($230) to 256 gigs (a flourishing assets at $750) — are befittingly impressive. Because the SSD is Flash-based and doesn’t requirement to spin, this drive, says Iomega, is twice as alacritous as a same “hard disk” model. And because the example incorporates U.S.B. 3.0 connectivity, it crapper designate accumulation at up to 10 nowadays the pace of today’s most ordinary edition of U.S.B., edition 2.0.

But “most common” is the sticking saucer here. Only a smattering of PC notebooks so farther combine the 3.0 standard, including whatever models from Asus and Dell. In the meantime, Intel has been employed on its copyrighted device-linking profession titled Light Peak, which the consort hopes module change U.S.B. in the incoming link accepted in the eld ahead. Iomega module substance treatment game to alter U.S.B. 3.0 devices, but these crapper be hard to install.

When U.S.B. 3.0 does come in flooded dress, the Iomega module be competitive, since it weighs exclusive a lodge of a blow and measures 0.35 inches anorectic (it’s also sweptback harmonious to U.S.B. 2.0). The consort says that it crapper snap backwards without alteration when dropped from a peak of 10 feet. Wish I could.

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Critic’s Notebook: From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by Phone Apps

2. October 2010

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Now something added is in endeavor that haw indifference the museum undergo modify boost — though it intends to do meet the opposite. During the terminal hebdomad I hit walked finished galleries, half-looking at objects and half-consulting an iPhone screen.

I hit swiped, broached and maneuvered in iSpace patch negotiating Afrasian sarcophagi, painter paintings and Apatosaurus bones. I hit searched for component IDs, audio-tour-guide drawing and tagged thumbnail images patch disagreeable to intend aggregation most Pacific Islanders or Picasso. I hit utilised museum apps to support me manoeuver museums. But I hit mostly change utilised along the way, unnatural into unadaptable paths, hunting at minimalist book bites, glimpsing possibilities patch existence thwarted by realities.

Free apps, meanwhile, proliferate, adding to their base consumer aggregation a multifarious ordered of subject virtues and flaws. The borough Museum has an app for the iPhone and Droid (Brooklyn Museum Mobile) that acts as a pass to the museum, allows cushy admittance to its online class and turns every room into a category of social-networking site.

The dweller Museum of Natural History fresh introduced its possess iPhone app (AMNH Explorer), which crapper refer your location, wage you directions in the museum and wage explanatory book and images of field objects. The Museum of Modern Art’s iPhone app (MoMA) is a short-cut entry into its frequence journeying system; it also challenges you to ingest the iPhone as a camera, slippy its stylemark trademark alongside apiece picture taken. The Metropolitan Museum of Art module inform its prototypal app in February, for an exhibition, “Guitar Heroes,” featuring the impact of renowned New royalty luthiers.

Other institutions, ranging from the Louvre in town to the scrutiny Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, also hit apps display soured their collections.

Such resource is sure welcome. The prizewinning museums discombobulate us at first. They strength exhibit something unfamiliar, resistless or breathtaking, and thusly something disorienting. We exclusive begin to compass what we wager when we locate it in context, manufacture a newborn conceptual map, making significance of the displays. A pass helps by substance an entry point, serving to create a inclose of reference.

There is also a unremarkable characteristic to this undergo as we literally essay to encounter our artefact around the world’s enthusiastic museums, whatever of which hit grown into mazes of corridors, annexes and renovated spaces. Finding 17th-century land portraits at the Met or the uranologist of Vertebrate Origins at the Museum of Natural History crapper be as arduous as uncovering bathrooms. We communicate guards, enquire maps.

And eventually, when we see at bag in a museum, we begin to advise easily between galleries and ideas. Every goal has its locate and resonates with binary meanings. How to intend there, though, from the bewildering beginning? There staleness be an app for that.

So for eld museums hit been activity around with frequence guides, push-button concern that hit been, in essence, transmogrified recording players or MP3 players, held up to the fruit or bespoken to headphones, every component adjusted in by the user. Some museums hit proven harnessing visitors’ cellphones: selector a number, key in an ID and center to transcribed commentary. The saint is a pass that module not obligation distracting attention. And presented the capabilities of the newborn smartphones, which crapper move to location, endeavor frequence and video, and earmark cyberspace interactions, a worldly pass is inevitable. But the ones I hit proven exhibit the modify exclusive in its infancy. They substance aggregation most events, exhibitions, schedules; they haw feature frequence or video. But seams are evident, and the apps noise low bottom strain.

The MoMA app, for example, though beautiful and substantially ordered out, does not do such more than its audio-guide system. It lets you encounter objects by floor, room or exhibition. But exclusive a whatever objects intend nearby tending — primarily the ones already singled discover for the museum’s frequence tour. You can’t manoeuver substantially around the galleries because the app does not run your location. Keying in goal drawing is awkward. And the planned tours, same the digit I sampled of the painter exhibition, are farther more distracting with the iPhone than with the museum’s more direct audio-tour equipment.

Moreover, unconnected from the frequence itself, aggregation is offense and availability inconsistent. Search for entireness by Warhol: whatever hit nearly no commentary; others substance excerpts from a book; others unification to frequence commentary. The app never got easier to use; it remained fancy and interfering. It was a comfort to invoke it off.

In whatever ways, the Museum of Natural History’s app is farther more sophisticated: Wi-Fi is today ordered up throughout its antiquity and is utilised to intend your location. You crapper distribution the app’s planned tours by asking it to begin nearby your location. You crapper letter directions to the colossus sequoia, the chromatic whale or a restroom. You crapper feature bits of statement and deal selection objects with others.

But the app’s limitations command its strengths. The aggregation is mostly farther inferior than what appears on the museum’s labels. There is no audio. Even when new snippets are offered (the Apatosaurus, we read, was mounted “for years” with the “wrong skull”), uncovering the objects and tapping finished individualist screens is more try than meet travel around and looking. The app also ends up undermining the scheme of individualist galleries, specially when they hit narratives. The app isolates objects kinda than conjunctive them.


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Apple Goes After The Camera Market Too

25. September 2010

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Any iPhone someone knows that there are a aggregation of gadgets and objects the iPhone has replaced. Among its Web and subject abilities sound owners don’t requirement maps, notepads, penalization players and a litany of another single-serving devices.

Now, there’s something added the iPhone is poised to completely change for whatever owners: the accepted saucer and dispense camera.

Take a countenance at Flickr, the favourite picture distribution Web site, where the statistics of the cameras utilised to upload images to the place exhibit that the iPhone is by farther the most favourite compared to another cameras, including Nikon and Canon.

And though this way has been a daylong instance in the making as the iPhone’s camera calibre has improved, a newborn program of patents that hit emerged from the consort exhibit that the Apple could completely change the tralatitious camera for many.

According to a newborn Apple papers unconcealed by the journal Apple Patently, which monitors the company’s stylish papers filings, Apple is employed on whatever engrossing newborn camera technologies for the iPhone and iPod Touch that could also be desegrated into the Macbook and iMac creation line.

Among the newborn features discussed in the patent, the consort is exploring newborn technologies that could change the camera winkle supported on the environs of the picture and the seek the camera is to an object. Another warning of this winkle would permit the camera cause particular a dimly lit Atlantic and pore the winkle only there. That effectuation no more photos of grouping who countenance same unreal cutouts when you ingest your camera flash.

Apple patently also points discover whatever newborn ascent and photo features that could materialize in the incoming procreation of the camera.

It’s also engrossing to state that Apple uses the word “dedicated” in its papers filing to exposit a doable camera that is not equal to a sound or computer:

The figure haw be a takeout device, much as a sacred digital ease or recording camera, a sharp sound or laptop/notebook machine with an desegrated camera duty or it haw be a screen individualized machine with a built-in camera function.

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