7 Coolest Features of the iPhone 4

By John Hudson
From: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

At Apple's developer conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs unveiled his company's next generation smartphone, the iPhone 4. With over 100 new features, there's a lot to drool over. Here's what gadget geeks are most excited about:

• Pricing and Color Schemes Michael Bettiol at Boy Genius Report writes: "The iPhone 4 will be available in both black and white. The 16GB model will be $199 and the 32GB model will be $299. Both of these prices reflect the 2-year contract price with AT&T. Pre-orders for the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan will commence on the 15th of June. June 24th is the big day as far as actual availability goes."

• It's Super-Thin, writes Agam Shah at PC World: "The iPhone 4 sports a new look and is the thinnest smartphone, [Jobs] said. At 9.3 millimeters (0.36 inches) thick, the new iPhone is 24 percent thinner than iPhone 3GS."

• 'You Can Bing It,' praises Miguel Helft at The New York Times: "No black eye for Google, but a win for Microsoft. Mr. Jobs announces that in addition to Google, which remains the default search engine, and Yahoo, which was already an option on the iPhone, iOS 4 will give users the option to use Bing for their searches."

• An Incredible Display Screen, notes Ed Oswald at Technologizer: "Another major feature is the 'Retina display,' Apple’s upgraded screen for the iPhone 4. The resolution comes in at 326dpi, which along with some software magic makes for clear, smooth fonts and more vivid images. Jobs said the resolution is actually higher than the human eye can see (exaggeration, perhaps?). Either way, Apple expects it to be 'years' before anybody matches this display."

• Video Chat and Camera Overhaul, details Matt Brian at The Next Web: "Steve Jobs has just announced that the iPhone 4 has been given a complete overhaul in the camera department, upgrading the 3MP camera on the 3GS to a 5MP LED flash enabled camera that has 5x digital zoom. The handset has a backside illuminated sensor, integrated so the imaging sensor can “get more light, enabling iPhone users to take better quality low-light photos. Pixel sensors have been kept larger instead of blindly increasing megapixels to improve picture clarity and quality... The iPhone 4 will be able to record full 720p HD video at 30fps with tap to focus, one-click sharing and the LED flash will stay illuminated to allow the recording of video in low-light situations. Instead of cropping videos on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 owners will be able to edit HD video using….wait for it…….iMovie for iPhone!" On top of that, there's also video chat: "You can use the front or rear camera, so people can see what you are seeing. Portrait or Landscape. The app is called FaceTime. 'Apple will ship 10s of millions of FaceTime devices this year, so there will be lots of people to talk to.'"

• Chip and Battery Overhaul, writes MG Siegler at TechCrunch: "As expected, the iPhone 4 will use Apple’s A4 chip. The device also has a bigger battery than ever before. The combination of these two things allows for 40% better battery life in some situations, Jobs said."

• The Gyroscope, writes Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo: "The new iPhone 4 has a gyroscope built-in. This means that it can track movement with a very high precision, much higher than the built-in accelerometers in the previous iPhones. It's 3-axis, so it's capable of detecting pitch, roll, and yaw. Couple with the accelerometer, you have 6-axis motion sensing."

10 Hot Questions About Windows Phone 7, Answered

by Sascha Segan
from: http://www.pcmag.com/

After years of watching its Windows Mobile operating system languish behind sexier products from archrivals Apple, Google, and Palm, Microsoft launched the Windows Phone 7 platform Monday morning. Why is it important? Does it live up to the rumors? And more to the point, what can you expect? Here are the top ten questions about the new Windows Phone 7 OS, and their answers.

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1. What is Windows Phone 7? It's Microsoft's new mobile-phone operating system. A total break from the past, it focuses your smartphone life around "hubs" rather than apps – the people you talk to, the pictures they post, or the games you like to play.

2. Is it a "Zune Phone?" No, but Zune is one of the built-in "hubs." So is XBox Live. So is Bing.

3. What will the phones look like? There will be many form factors, but they all have to have capacitive, 800-by-480 or greater touch screens and have three buttons at the bottom: Home, Back and Search. They will all have four-point multi-touch displays, compasses and accelerometers. You'll see phones with and without sliding QWERTY keyboards, but no BlackBerry-style candybars or non-touch phones.

4. What carriers will they run on? All four major U.S. carriers, but AT&T will get the first crack with an as-yet unannounced phone.

5. How's the Office and e-mail support? Looking great. WP7 - that's the new official acronym - supports OneNote, Office, multiple Exchange accounts and SharePoint. But the interface is definitely more about communicating and having fun than about doing spreadsheets.

6. Can it sync with a Mac? Not initially. WP7 will require the Zune software to sync, and there's no Mac Zune software. Look for third parties like Mark/Space to fill in the gaps with a syncing solution.

7. Will it run old Windows Mobile apps? I don't think so. The interfaces are very different. Microsoft promised we'd find out more at their MIX developers' conference in mid-March.

8. Does it have multi-tasking? We can't tell, but Microsoft said you'd be able to "play music in the background".

9. How about Adobe Flash? Not at launch, but Steve Ballmer himself said that he doesn't have anything against it.

10. When's it coming? For the holidays, 2010.

Bam! Bing Now Cooks Up Recipes

by Leena Rao

from: http://www.techcrunch.com/

Bing just launched a nifty new feature for any cooks out there. When you search for a food item, Bing will now show recipe results that involve the item. So if I search for macaroni, I’ll see a tab to the left of results that will show me “Macaroni Recipes.”
Recipe results are pulled from a variety of recipe websites including MyRecipes.com and Epicurious.com. Each recipe will result will show the source or name of the site, user ratings, and a measure fat and of calories. You can filter recipes by convenience, type of cuisine, occasion, ratings, course and main ingredient. Unfortunately, the recipe feature doesn’t show up for every query. I typed in macaroni and cheese as well as spaghetti and meatballs, I didn’t get the recipe results for either search term.
It’s important to note that Google doesn’t do this with recipes. With many recipe portals on the web, it can often be difficult to sift through large amounts of recipes on the web within search engines. As an avid cook who uses sites like Epicurious and Foodnetwork.com often, I am a big fan of this addition to Bing.

Information provided by CrunchBas

Go Bing Yourself, Right Now

by Erick Schonfeld

It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as go Google yourself, but now you can go Bing yourself. (Then again, Google took a few years to become a verb.). Bing, Microsoft’s latest effort to compete in search, is now live on a “preview” site. The key thing to pay attention to is the guided search assistance on the left and the different experiences for the travel, images, video, maps, news, and shopping tabs.

A few things to try:

• An ambiguous Web search: “turkey” (do you want images, recipes, facts, or a map of the country? The topic guides in the left explore pane will help you narrow your search).
• A travel search: “SFO to JFK”
• Video search: “Simpsons” (hover over the thumbnail to play the video)
• Image search: “Rollercoasters” (notice the infinite scroll).
• A health search: “Sore throat”
• Shopping: “Digital SLR” (sort by price or brand, get average ratings and CashBack).
• Maps: “BBQ” (automatically knows what city you are in and offers up geo-appropriate results).
• News Search: “Bing” (what else?)

Check it out. Try a few searches and then tell us in comments if you will ever go back.

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CrunchBase Information

Bing

Company:	Microsoft
Website:	bing.com

Bing is a search engine from Microsoft officially announced on May 28, 2009. Learn More

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