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A New Search Engine Specializing in Fun

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:54:04 +0000

If you’re like me, you like to make the most out of what little free time you have. One way of finding ideas for activities without wasting precious minutes is by searching online. But sometimes the process of browsing the Web can suck you in and waste more time than it saves.

This week, I tested a tool called Goby (pronounced go-be), www.goby.com, which works as an activity search engine to help you find things to do. It tries to be simple enough so that you can get some ideas and start doing the things you want to do rather than wasting hours in front of the computer.

[ See post to watch video ]

Goby uses three boxes—What, Where and When—with drop-down menus to find results for your query. It crawls the Web searching what it considers high quality information from 500 sources and employs a part-human, part-machine review process to ensure first-rate results. Goby searches through over 200 categories, including live music, art exhibits, outdoor festivals, spas, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants.

Using Goby was an emotional roller coaster. With very little effort I found things in Washington, D.C., that I’ve never heard of in the seven-plus years I’ve lived here, including tea with Martha Washington and a stuffed Civil War hero horse on display at the Smithsonian. But I also found inaccurate Goby results like an activity in Washington state rather than Washington, D.C., or photos that were supposed to represent a tennis center but instead showed a celebrity’s child with the same name. And sometimes the same results were listed four times in a row.

Goby’s results took a serious nose dive when I looked outside the city in my hometown of Allentown, Pa. I searched for all performing arts and theater near Allentown, an area that I know first-hand has plenty to offer in the way of music, theater and dance. Goby returned two results—one for the Nutcracker in December and another for a Shakespeare play that was put on last July. A quick check of my hometown newspaper’s Web site showed hundreds of performances to attend in the coming months.

The Goby home page

Goby.com has been available to the public for only a few weeks and it is still working out some kinks. The more people use it, the more accurate its results will become—or at least that’s what its founders hope will happen. When Goby’s search results are accurate, they include the kinds of thing locals would want to see or do in their own hometown, and that’s no small feat. But people won’t have a lot of patience for some of the erroneous results that now show up in Goby. Also, this activity search engine currently lacks features like the ability to build and save itineraries, make one-click ticket purchases or book reservations.

Though Goby’s query boxes ask users to enter What, Where and When, the When is always an optional specification, and people can enter either What or Where if they only know one of these factors. General suggestions of categories also are made in Goby’s drop-down menus. The What box opens five categories: things to do, food and drink, events, places to stay and, right now, fall fun; many of these open several, more-specified subcategories. For example, I started a search and followed a four-part trail: things to do, outdoor recreation, horseback riding and horseback riding trails—all within the same drop-down menu.

If you know what you want to do but not where you want to do it, the drop-down arrow in the Where box opens an interactive map of the U.S. Users can pan around the entire country, zooming in on specific areas or small towns. I even zoomed in on Minot, N.D. (population 35,000) and found out about an event taking place at the Northwest Arts Center on Nov. 2.

This map comes in handy if you know the general geographic area where you would like to spend time, but don’t know the area’s name.

Lists of query results are deliberately designed to show more than just Web links, like what Google (GOOG) often displays. Suggested activities are displayed in a numbered list on the left side of the screen, and a map with corresponding numbers is displayed on the right, moving along with your cursor as you scroll on the page. A blue flashlight tool on the map can be dragged anywhere to pinpoint exactly where you want to find activities, and after you drop the flashlight on a spot, the left-hand list dynamically changes to correspond with that map view.

A “More Info” tab shows vital information for each query result like a description, time, address and Web site for the activity. If you are looking at lodging, you can adjust a price scale to limit or expand results for rooms that cost a certain amount per night. Lists of results can be sorted according to category: Art events can be sorted by relevance, distance, date or name; bed-and-breakfasts also can be sorted by price.

Photos representing these activities are pulled in from source sites like bedandbreakfast.com as well as from Google and Flickr. While these images can provide a quick glimpse of something while saving users from navigating to another Web page, some of the results weren’t accurate. For example, when I searched for tennis in Washington, D.C., a tennis program that I didn’t know about called “Tennis at Shiloh” was listed in results. But four out of six photos showed images of Shiloh, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s child of the same name. I called the organization to confirm that it is indeed a real program, but without calling, I would have seen the photos, doubted the quality of the place and looked for another spot to play tennis.

A “What’s Nearby” function is designed to help people expand their activity searches. It takes the address of a selected activity and suggests other things nearby like places to go for dinner or where to listen to live music.

Unfortunately, Goby doesn’t let you build an itinerary. So if you find a few possible activities for a weekend trip to Williamsburg, Va., and then use “What’s Nearby” to find a pub for lunch, a restaurant for dinner and a bed-and-breakfast for the night, you can’t save all of these findings using Goby. The company says it plans to incorporate these features in the near future.

Goby would be incredibly helpful if it had a mobile app. This Sunday when I was across town from my house and had an unexpected block of free time, I could have used Goby to find a nearby art exhibit or a spot for apple picking. Goby says it is working on an iPhone app, which it expects to release later this year.

If you get lucky with Goby, you’ll find activities that let you do as its name says: Go, be and enjoy your surrounding area. But the site’s results need to be much more accurate for me to start relying on it full time.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Tracking Friends the Google Way

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:02:04 +0000

For the past week, I’ve been stalking my sister, my boyfriend and my boss. They’ve also been stalking me, and we still like one another.

All four of us have been using an application that, once downloaded onto a mobile device, uses location-based technology to track its users’ movements. The app then displays the user’s location on a map for friends to see, so they can know where the person is at all times.

We used Google Latitude, a new feature in the search giant’s Google Maps mobile application as of today. People can get this if they upgrade their current version of Google Maps or install Maps for the first time. It works on Google’s G1, most color BlackBerrys, most Windows Mobile devices and some other smart phones. Google says it will soon work on the iPhone, iPod touch and Sony Ericsson phones.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google (GOOG) is arriving late to the party where location-based apps like Loopt (Loopt.com) from Loopt Inc. and Where (where.com) from uLocate Communications are already following people on a variety of mobile devices ranging from basic cellphones to iPhones. These apps rely on GPS satellites, Wi-Fi or cellular towers to locate you and your friends, and then use this data to encourage people to find nearby attractions, local information or social networks.

Latitude is an opt-in-only feature, meaning no one can see your location — or vice versa — without permission. It uses either GPS satellites or cell-tower and Wi-Fi location technology depending on your mobile device’s specifications and what’s most available in certain spots. My trusted testers and I used Google Latitude on three different kinds of BlackBerrys: the Pearl 8130, Curve 8320 and two Curve 8900s. Of these, only the 8900s made use of GPS.

Latitude, a feature in Google Maps, shares someone’s location, status and photo with friends. Location data can update every several minutes when a user is moving.

Along with their locations, friends can share other information on Latitude by updating a status line or changing their picture, which appears as a tiny representative icon on a map. Changes to one’s status or picture will be reflected in Google Talk, Google’s instant-messaging tool, but this doesn’t integrate with other status-related social-networking programs like Facebook or Twitter, and thus may saddle people with another status entry to update.

It’s easy to find fault in Latitude since it often spots people inaccurately, including showing my sister in Boston’s Charles River, rather than in a neighborhood along the river. It’s worth noting that tracking technology in general, including GPS, can be inaccurate. But even with these inaccuracies, my friends and I liked finding one another on our respective maps and used this geographic information to send location-specific messages to each other: I joked with my boyfriend about not leaving his house on time for a dinner and commended my sister on getting up early for church on Sunday.

Usability issues aside, location-based services like Latitude can be just plain creepy, especially when a Big Brother like Google is tracking your whereabouts. So Google incorporated easy-to-change privacy settings so that locations can be automatically detected, manually entered or completely hidden from other people. Or people can sign out of Latitude altogether.

Likewise, users can adjust the level of geographic information they’re willing to share with each person. For example, I might want to share with my boyfriend my best available location information, like a specific spot on a street, and share only city-level location information with my boss.

The city-level information would be helpful for my parents, who often wish they had a better idea of when I’m traveling for work and where I’ll be. But my parents aren’t likely to download Google Latitude onto their mobile devices anytime soon. For them, a special Latitude widget in iGoogle — Google’s personalized home page feature on a PC — might be best. This widget is also useful for people who may have Latitude on a mobile device but are sitting at their desks and want to see where their friends are.

As expected, Latitude worked differently between me and the people who live in the same area, compared with how it worked between me and people who live hundreds of miles away, like my sister in Boston. For example, my boyfriend and I are more likely to use our respective locations to plan where we’ll meet for dinner, while my sister’s current location is just fun to see. Still, my sister and I know one another’s neighborhoods well enough to have an idea of where the other was, and we felt a little more plugged in with each other’s lives when we saw one another on our maps.

People who live in urban settings will likely use Latitude differently than those who live in the suburbs. One of my testers noted that it could be fun using Latitude to see where friends are out in a city on any given night. But because Latitude sometimes pegs people’s locations as a lot farther away than they are — one test spotted a friend 1.5 miles away from his real location — this might be tough data to go on.

After using Latitude for a while, I grew to recognize familiar location mistakes like home or work, and knew where my friends actually were. But it’s unfortunate that locations aren’t more accurately marked.

Latitude returned the most precise location results when determining where the two GPS-using BlackBerry Curve 8900s were at any given time, though these spots still weren’t perfect. If a mobile device doesn’t have GPS or if GPS simply isn’t available in the area, cellular towers and Wi-Fi will help a determine location. These alternate methods use less battery than GPS, so they will work instead of GPS when Google Maps isn’t running in the foreground of a device.

Latitude users can opt to allow their location to automatically update every several minutes while they’re moving. A Friends List that appears with the map lists people in order of who is moving starting with who moved most recently. Users can send text messages or call friends directly from this list, or find nearby spots like bars or movie theaters by typing into a search box; restaurant information includes ratings and reviews. Directions to and from friends’ locations are also available, and you can plan your route via car, mass transit or walking.

Location-based services like Latitude are great for keeping tabs on friends and could even come in handy in other situations — such as when parents want to know where their kids are or when elderly relatives want to let someone always know their whereabouts. But I wouldn’t want to depend on them in an emergency.

Google Latitude Web Site

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Birds of a Feather Twitter Together

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:20:02 +0000

If you’ve heard of Twitter but don’t exactly know what it is or how it works, you’re in good company. In the past two months a bunch of my friends, ranging in age from early 20s to late 30s, have asked me about Twitter — or Tweeter, as one person accidentally called it.

To clear things up, I’ve put together a basic Twitter guide that explains how to use it, Twitter lingo, privacy options, mobile applications that can be used with the service and problems that it has. Let’s get started.

Twitter limits social-networking updates to 140 characters or less. The service is surprisingly useful, but leaves room for improvement.

What is it? In short, Twitter is a free social-networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates about whatever they’re currently doing, and these updates cannot exceed 140 text-based characters.

Lingo: Twitter is the name of the service. The term twittering describes the activity of updating a Twitter account. A tweet is an individual Twitter update. Twitterers are people who use the service.

Followers, not Friends: Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace use the term “friend” to refer to people who are connected with one another, but Twitterers can simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow” option. This alerts the person that you’re following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not.

Why use it? While some people primarily use Twitter to post updates about their activities or comments on the news, I use the service more as a follower, allowing me to see quick snippets of news as it occurs. Most tweets are written by real people, while others, such as updates from news organizations that you’ve selected, are automatically generated. Many tweets include the addresses of Web sites with relevant articles that tell readers more on a topic.

Where is it? Twitter works on your Web browser at Twitter.com, where user updates appear in a simple list form as they are submitted. After you’ve signed up and started following other people, those people’s updates, or tweets, will appear when you log onto Twitter.com using a username and password.

Twitter also works on mobile phones, where the 140-character limit allows messages to be sent and received via SMS text messaging. Tweets can also be sent and received via email. Users with smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones can use one of the many popular mobile applications for accessing Twitter, which offer much richer options than simple SMS does; I’ll get into these later.

Privacy: Unlike other social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter isn’t focused on holding and sharing personal information about its members. Indeed, the service operates with a majority (80%, according to the company) of users opting to keep their updates public, that is, follow-able by anyone, without permission. This openness encourages people to follow one another or to see who others are already following, and then follow the same people.

However, users can opt to protect their updates, meaning they must grant permission for others to follow them. If you’d like to sign up for Twitter, but aren’t comfortable putting your first and/or last name on the site, you don’t have to; instead, just tell others your username.

Twitter Page Personalization: Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. (Mine is twitter.com/kabster728, and you can follow me.) This page also shows the number of people a user follows, how many people follow her and how many total updates she has posted.

Twitterers can customize their Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as the background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, and this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets on Twitter.com, where followers recognize and appreciate its familiarity. Some people, including me, use pictures of themselves as their icons, while others use random shots.

Apps/Clients: Twitter works on any browser, and will also work on a mobile browser. If you have a mobile device like the BlackBerry or iPhone, you can jazz up the experience by downloading a third-party app like TwitterFon, TwitterBerry, Tweetie or Twitteriffic. Twittervision, another mobile app, plots points on maps to show where tweets originated. Desktop clients also abound, including Twhirl and TweetDeck. Twitterfeed will set your blog to automatically post content to Twitter.

@Replies, Direct Messages: Each tweet that appears in your Twitter feed can be replied to using a shortcut arrow that appears beside the tweet, and these responses to tweets are called @Replies. So if JoeSchmo tweets to say he saw the new James Bond movie and hated it, you can reply to this with a tweet of your own that says, “@JoeSchmo I still adore Daniel Craig.” These @Replies appear for everyone to see, and must start with @ plus the username of whomever you’re responding to.

Direct Messages differ from @Replies because they can be sent only between people who are following one another. These messages aren’t posted publicly. They appear on your Twitter.com page in a right-side section labeled Direct Messages and will also be sent to your mobile device if you have one registered with Twitter.

Favorites: If you read a tweet that you really like, you can save it as a favorite by selecting a small star beside the tweet, thus adding it to a Favorites section on your homepage. Anyone can see anyone else’s Favorites, regardless of whether or not they’re following one another.

Problems: Twitter’s bare-bones approach gets to the point quickly, displaying tweets in a simple, quick-read format. But the site is lacking in many areas. It used to enable searching for people on Twitter, but that capability is currently down. Now, to search for friends on Twitter, you must upload your email contacts from a Web-based mail service. The company says it plans to have people-search working again by the end of the year. Meanwhile, search.twitter.com enables keyword or location searches.

Twitter lacks the ability to sort tweets according to what the user wants. If I just want to see tweets from real people and not those that are automatically generated, I’m out of luck. Same goes if I want to keep certain friends’ tweets in a prominent place on my homepage; Twitter has no way of doing this.

Twitter users aren’t notified when someone responds to their tweet with an @Reply. I recently happened to look at @Replies on my Twitter homepage and found three from people who follow me (I don’t follow them).

If you’re adding a Web address to a tweet and the characters in the URL take up too much space, Twitter will automatically use TinyURL behind the scenes to shrink your long link into a shorter one when you post your tweet. But this works only if you have enough remaining characters in your tweet to fit the long version of your link. A built-in TinyURL converter on the page would help immensely.

Twitter says it’s working to make @Replies more effective. It also says it plans to do more with filtering and sorting, so that the Twitter interface is more useful. In the meantime, Twitter does a good job of giving people simplified news about others and the world around them. If you’re often in a rush, Twitter can be a great resource for fast information.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

The App Test: Rating Programs for Google's G1

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:30:02 +0000

Today, people interested in seeing the first Google-branded consumer-hardware product will get to satisfy their curiosity as the company, joining with T-Mobile (DT), unveils its $179 G1 handheld computer. This touch-screen device will compete with Apple’s iPhone, and it includes a key feature missing in the iPhone: a physical keyboard.

The G1 is built around a model of openness, enabling developers to create applications — software programs, called “apps” for short — that will succeed or fail according to the feedback from the online community. Naturally, these community-contributed programs need a marketplace where G1 users can find them, and the Android Market provides just that.

This week, I installed various applications from the Android Market on a G1 and tested them out. Google (GOOG) says it will launch with around 40 to 50 applications in this virtual store, and these and all other apps will be available free of charge from now until at least the start of next year.

BreadCrumbz makes maps.

I found these apps to be useful, entertaining and mostly straightforward. There were a few that I felt tried to jam too much into one application, such as BreadCrumbz, an app that asks users to add pictures, instructional arrows and labels to maps that they make for friends. Other apps kept it short and sweet, like Wi-Fi Toggle — a one-touch button that turns wireless capability on or off to save battery power.

The G1’s apps are more utilitarian than most apps I’ve tested for Apple’s iPhone — and not quite as visually pleasing. I even compared one G1 program, Plusmo College Football, directly with the same app running on the iPhone, and I missed the artsy touches of the Apple (AAPL) version — like menus that flipped 180 degrees when selected rather than simply opening.

One downside: Only a measly 70 megabytes of internal flash memory are reserved on the G1 for storing these third-party applications. Once you fill that limited internal storage space, you have to delete some of your apps to add more. You can’t currently store apps on the phone’s roomier removable memory card. (A one-gigabyte microSD comes with the G1.) The iPhone doesn’t set such an arbitrary limit on application-storage space. The Android Market, like Apple’s iTunes, keeps a record of each user’s installed apps so they can be easily downloaded again later at no extra charge (if they carried a fee). But, unlike the iPhone, the G1 can’t back up your apps to a PC or Mac.

The G1’s open model means extra setup steps during app installation. For example, if an application will access certain information — such as a user’s Internet connection, location data (as identified by GPS) or other personal information (calendar, contacts, etc.) — warnings appear during installation, and the user must grant permission. In addition, many apps come with license agreements that must be okayed before users can continue. If something goes wrong with an app, people can post complaints on community boards or email developers, whose email addresses appear during installation.

The Android Market home page.

To offer a general idea of what’s available, I’ve highlighted a handful of apps that I like. I broke the applications into three groups: Functional, Fun (if occasionally kitschy) and Frills.

Functional

Wi-Fi Toggle: This does what it says. Once installed, it adds an icon to the G1’s desktop that provides a quick way to turn Wi-Fi on and off without digging into the settings menu.

Locale: Like Wi-Fi Toggle on steroids, this app allows a user to set up a G1 so it dynamically changes its settings in specific conditions. The settings can respond to calls from certain people or changes in the phone’s battery power, calendar, the user’s location or the time. For instance, the Wi-Fi can automatically turn off, ringer volume can go up or down, desktop wallpaper can change or a post can be sent. Just think of all the churchgoers who could ensure their cellphone ringers are turned off on Sunday mornings or when the church’s location is sensed.

Ringdroid: Make ringtones from your own songs by adjusting bars to mark the start and end of each ringtone. Hitting Save automatically keeps the ringtone, labeled with the song’s name by default, for use on the phone.

Video Player: The G1 doesn’t have a built-in way to play videos, and this app does the trick in a clear-cut, reliable way.

Fun

Movie ShowTimes: This lets people use a finger to flick across the G1’s touch screen to page through movie poster images, titles and brief descriptions. Below each movie description, an on-screen button labeled “Showtimes Near You” uses GPS to generate lists of nearby movie times.

Pac-Man: The classic arcade game never gets old. You can move Pac-Man through his maze with one of three methods: tilting the G1 so its accelerometer moves the Pac-Man, swiping with a finger to point Pac-Man in the right direction or using the trackball to move him around the screen. I preferred the trackball.

Cooking Capsules: This program demonstrates food-making without being either too intimidating or too dull and simplified. Though there were only six “capsules” when I tested it, each includes steps for watching (an instructional video), shopping (using an on-screen list of items) and cooking (with numbered instructions on how to cook the food).

Bonsai Blast is a gaming app that’s now available for the G1.

Bonsai Blast: This colorful, Asian-themed game directs people to shoot colorful marbles at other chains of marbles, with a goal of getting three matching marbles lined up beside one another so they’ll disappear.

Krystle II: Turns your G1’s entire screen into a picture of fur that purrs and vibrates as you touch it. There’s no real point, but Krystle II is addictive and strangely comforting during long conference calls.

Frills

Ecorio: This well-intended app aims to track users’ travel carbon footprints in order to make them more responsible for the environment. It asks users to enter things like recent transit routes and carpools and suggests ways to reduce and offset people’s footprints.

Maverick: An IM program that allows people to add scribbles, location data or even photos to active instant-messaging conversations. Maverick signs users into Google Talk and Picasa simultaneously, adding IM images into an auto-generated Picasa album for later viewing.

PicSay: Add word balloons, titles, props and effects to digital photos captured and/or stored on the G1, then send the images via multimedia messaging service or email, or save one as a caller ID.

There are many more G1 apps to try, and developers are expected to keep making them for this new device. As with the iPhone, apps obtained for the G1 from the Android Market enable it to morph into a different device with different tools every day.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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Mapping Your Digital Photo World

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:02:02 +0000

After spending summer vacation shooting the sights, many people face the same chore: labeling and organizing digital photos before forgetting what they are and where they were taken.

Now there’s a way to upload photos that are already labeled with their exact latitude and longitude using geotagging, the fancy name for labeling data with information on its geographic origin. Photos with “geotags” have coordinates embedded invisibly in them. Some programs or online photo services use these tags to generate maps showing just where each photo was taken, or to label or organize the images. Not long ago, this capability was mostly done through manual labeling or with costly equipment.

The $129 Eye-Fi Explore Card from Eye-Fi Inc. gives people the ability to wirelessly send geotagged photos from a digital camera.

This week, I tested the $129 Eye-Fi Explore Card (EyeFi.com), a special two-gigabyte memory card from Eye-Fi Inc. that adds a photo geotagging feature to Eye-Fi’s original functionality: the automatic wireless uploading of photos, straight from a digital camera to a home computer or photo-sharing service. If all goes well, users can capture and upload what are essentially geographically prelabeled batches of digital photos — with minimal effort and time.

But after days of testing, I found myself more frustrated as I used this wireless memory card in various places and situations, and found the tagging to be unreliable in one scenario. (Eye-Fi Inc. said my experiences weren’t typical.) At home in Washington, D.C., and while on a business trip to California, I tried it using a two-year-old Kodak digital camera and two different Vista laptops, though it also works on Macs.

Eye-Fi introduced the Explore Card as a follow-up to the company’s original wireless memory card, which it introduced last fall. Once set up, the first Eye-Fi card initiated the transferring of photos to a computer or Web site whenever the digital camera was turned on and as long as it was near a pre-associated wireless network.

Through a partnership with Skyhook Wireless, the Explore card can automatically label photos with their latitude and longitude using data from the Skyhook’s Wi-Fi positioning system. As long as a photo is captured within the Skyhook coverage area, which the company says covers 70% of North America, and the geotagging is enabled, each photo will be coded with data identifying where it was captured.

The Explore Card turned otherwise normal photo-sharing sites into mini maps showing where I had traveled while on a business trip in Silicon Valley. I set my account up to work with Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, Shutterfly and Picasa Web Albums, though only one will work at a time. Flickr, Picasa Web Albums and Smugmug make use of geotagged photos by tagging shots with their location data, such as “Downtown Palo Alto, California.” I used Flickr and Picasa Web Albums to instantaneously generate a map showing where I was when I took photos.

On Flickr, each image was represented by a pink dot associated with one of several photos displayed in a horizontal bar below the map. This map can be searched for specific tags (photo labels) or locations and can be narrowed to show images from everyone who uses Flickr, just your own photostream, or only photos from friends or contacts. My searches returned results in seconds, finding shots that were geotagged with “Palo Alto” and tagged by me as containing flowers. I enjoyed looking at other Flickr users’ photos when I searched everyone’s images, specifically in cities where I recognized landmarks.

Picasa Web Albums showed each geotagged image on a map by placing tiny versions of each photo on the map. In certain cases, when I had multiple photos taken at the same spot, photos appeared with lines drawn from them to a spot, much like spokes of a wheel. I also looked at my Picasa photos on maps in Google Earth; a quick link to the program is conveniently found at the top of the Picasa Web Albums screen.

Another key feature of the Explore Card is its hotspot connectivity. The card is capable of working in any Wayport location, which includes McDonald’s (MCD) restaurants and certain airports and hotels. Though using Wayport locations normally requires sign-ins and/or payment via a computer screen, the Explore Card works as soon as the camera is turned on in these locations. This service is free for the first year, but after that, it costs $19 annually to continue.

Finally, the Explore Card notifies users via SMS or email messages when photos have either started or finished uploading; or if these uploads are interrupted, which happened to me a few times. This is useful in Wayport wireless zones, where the camera has no real way of signaling when an upload is finished or when a computer isn’t handy.

In a hotel with a flaky Wi-Fi network, the Explore Card was crippled, though I blame the hotel for this inconvenience. But even when I traveled to a local McDonald’s, where Eye-Fi’s maker has a deal for free Wi-Fi for its cards, the Eye-Fi stuttered and couldn’t consistently upload photos. When I plugged the card directly into my laptops, the results weren’t much better.

If you aren’t within Wi-Fi range while taking a photo, it won’t be geotagged. I ran into this issue in one instance: On California’s highway 101, I took a handful of photos, but when I checked my Eye-Fi account later, none of these photos was automatically geotagged.

Some people worry about privacy settings when it comes to uploading geotagged photos directly to a sharing Web site. Settings within the Eye-Fi Manager make it easy to adjust permissions to determine who can see your photos within each of about 25 sharing sites.

Users can opt to share photos only to a home computer through their own Wi-Fi network, and a special card is designed for just that: the $79 Eye-Fi Home. This is meant to serve as a shortcut for transfers.

The original Eye-Fi, which costs $99, was a useful tool as a wireless memory card, but I didn’t have as much luck with the more expensive Eye-Fi Explore. Still, when it did work, I found geotagging to be a great way of automatically labeling and organizing my photos. Instead of just being neatly stored in a folder on your computer, geotagged images are given a spark of life and relevancy when plotted out on a map.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Testing Souped-Up Search Functions

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Search, by nature, doesn’t need to be overly exciting stuff. It usually involves typing a word in a box, pressing enter and reading results to find the best one — and this style works well for plenty of people, as is evidenced by Google’s success. But many would like to see search become smarter, more intuitive or even visually stimulating.

Searchme

This week, I tested two applications that turn searching into feasts for the eyes. Instead of showing search results in lines of text, these results are visually based. One, called SpaceTime, displays search results in three-dimensional views that make images look as if they are flying onto the screen. The other, an actual search engine called Searchme, spreads image results out in fan-like patterns. Both SpaceTime and Searchme encourage people to search by choosing what looks visually familiar or accurate, rather than trying to discern what the text in a link might mean.

The idea of improved search isn’t a new one. Many have tried, ranging from Ask.com’s media-rich result pages to Mahalo.com’s human-powered search engine. But Google’s (GOOG) simplicity and experience have made it hard to beat, and competitors know the importance of relevant and reliable results. Rather than comparing these sites with the big G, I looked at them as add-ons that could be especially useful for certain searches.

Searchme, a search engine built from the ground up, is technically in private beta — meaning that it is still a work in progress and users must be invited to use it. The company gave me access to the site and created a link so that readers of this column could also use it: www.searchme.com/wsj. This Web-based tool works on Windows and Mac operating systems and in any major browser, and it tries to improve search by asking users to choose a category for their search terms.

For instance, when I typed “US Open” in the Searchme box, categories appeared to the right, including Tennis, Squash, Gambling & Casinos and Golf. Since I was looking for the tennis-related grand slam, I chose the Tennis category and saved myself some typing. The more I used Searchme, the more I came to rely on these categories for faster, more-refined results.

SpaceTime

Searchme’s visual search works by displaying snapshots of Web sites, each of which has the search term highlighted on its page. These pages fan out from the center to look like Cover Flow in Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes, visually sorting images like album covers in a jukebox so they can be flipped through until the best Web page is found.

By moving a cursor along a horizontal scroll bar below these pages, I skimmed through 10 to 15 Web sites in a matter of seconds, quickly weeding out unwanted sites. But these pages don’t allow interaction like scrolling down or playing of embedded videos. A button below these images reveals a list-view where text and links relating to the images are listed, but I kept this option hidden more often than not.

Though Searchme’s categories are helpful and I liked using visual searching, I did notice many more results, overall, while performing searches through Google and Yahoo (YHOO). A Google search for the Regency Hotel in New York City returned accurate links to the hotel’s Web site — and a map. Searchme’s first result was a defunct Web page for the Regency, and the younger search engine doesn’t yet have maps, news or stock quotes like Google.

Settings can be adjusted for Searchme, including one option to filter out adult content and another to open up new windows whenever a Web page is selected, so as not to lose the current page.

SpaceTime (www.spacetime.com) differs from Searchme in that it doesn’t try to be its own search engine. Instead, it is a browser that works with established search engines and Web sites. It isn’t Web-based, like Searchme, and must be downloaded to a Windows (MSFT) PC (it doesn’t yet work on Macs). The intense 3-D graphics of this program work best on a computer with at least one gigabyte of system memory and 256 megabytes of dedicated video memory.

At first glance, SpaceTime appears to be a normal browser. It has the usual URL line where specific Web sites can be entered and a search box at the top right that can be set to search Google, Google Images, Yahoo, Yahoo Images, eBay (EBAY), Flickr, YouTube, RSS feeds or Amazon (AMZN).

But using this search box starts the fun of the product. Search results appear as images lined up on the screen, floating through space and descending into the distance in a 3-D visualization akin to that of Windows Vista’s Flip 3D. SpaceTime’s dark background gives it a dramatic edge, and each object is reflected in an artistic, glass-like surface. Results can be tweaked, turned, magnified and moved within this 3-D space.

When I performed normal Google or Yahoo searches, the returned results appeared as images of each Web site on which the searched term appeared. When I searched for images on Google, Yahoo or Flickr, the results came back in image-only fashion — not images embedded in Web sites — that looked stunning lined up in 3-D. Searches of eBay are especially useful on SpaceTime because each item up for bid zooms onto the screen as its own object along with its current price, number of bids and remaining auction time. YouTube searches return videos lined up in SpaceTime’s 3-D environment.

With all of these images flying in and out of the screen, things can get a little overwhelming. One pile of search results is called a stack, and each stack is automatically saved in a dock at the bottom of the screen, labeled with a thumbnail image of where you last left off. Searches can be saved and snapshots of screens can be captured and saved in the dock.

To return results as fast as possible, SearchTime says it will pull up just 10 at a time for image, product and video searches, or five pages at once for content-heavy sites. But in my tests, using two different Vista computers with 2GB of RAM each, I usually never saw more than five results at a time. The next five or 10 images can be retrieved by choosing a “Next Set” button at the bottom of the screen.

On-screen Web sites and objects are interactive, meaning that I could scroll down within a Web page or play a YouTube video within the SpaceTime screen. A clever magnifying glass pops up on the screen to pinpoint the original search term on each page.

SpaceTime allowed me to rapidly flip through tens or even hundreds of images and Web sites in a very short time, but it wasn’t perfect. Some search results took a while to load, only displaying the first object while the other lined-up objects appeared as empty frames because they were still loading. YouTube seemed sluggish and wasn’t as easy to navigate as some other searches, and Flickr was especially slow to load in a few of my tests.

SpaceTime is working on a Web-based version that won’t rely so heavily on each user’s PC specs, and Searchme is still in its testing phase, working to return more relevant results. But for now, these two sites turn search into a different, much more visually stimulating experience. After using these programs for a little while, I started to search differently — moving through results faster and clicking on fewer links that returned unwanted results. Though I’ll still rely on Google for basic searches, visual search can save time and turn searching into a fun process.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Apple's Updates for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:59:00 +0000

Next month Apple Inc. will officially unlock its famed iPhone, allowing outsiders to create software programs for this gadget and the similar iPod touch. But last week the company gave its own software developers another shot before handing over the keys, announcing updates for both the iPhone and iPod touch. These updates outfit each device with a handful of new features, enable more customization and nudge the iPod touch a little closer to the iPhone.

Owners of the $399 iPhone can get a free update, but those with the $299 (8 gigabyte) or $399 (16 gigabyte) iPod touch must pay $20 for their update because Apple tracks revenues differently for iPhones compared with its iPods.

Updates for the iPhone and iPod touch add Web bookmarks to the home screen and a redesigned Maps application that displays a user’s current location.

This week, I’ve been using an iPhone and iPod touch with these updates, and I must say that both devices are much more useful and fun with these improvements. Web clips, or browser bookmarks that take the form of icons on the home screen, give these gadgets a new sense of instant gratification because they direct users to specific Web pages seconds after the device turns on. These little icons can be labeled and moved around, letting you group favorite Web sites on one screen, games on another screen, saved Web research on a third screen and so on.

Getting Synched

Both devices can be updated by synching with iTunes; the iPhone does so automatically and the iPod touch updates only if the owner buys this upgrade through the iTunes Store. New iPod touches include the updated software free.

New to both devices is a redesigned Maps application that, at the touch of a button, displays a user’s current location in an on-screen map — without using Global Positioning Systems. Other non-GPS devices currently do this, but they depend solely on cellphone towers to determine your spot. The iPhone uses both cellphone towers and nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location; the touch uses only the Wi-Fi method.

The iPod touch also now has the same stellar Mail program that is found in the iPhone, a real plus for owners who have been curious about mobile email but weren’t necessarily ready to plunge into a BlackBerry or iPhone, or don’t want to pay for a monthly data plan.

Both devices can store numerous Web clips on up to nine different home screens, each of which has room for 16 icons. A handful of permanent applications appear by default on the main home screen, but these can be shuffled around. Along with Maps and Mail, applications for Stocks, Weather and Notes were also added to the iPod touch.

Multi-touch technology only improves these new features. For example, home screens are easily navigated by flicking a finger horizontally to get from one to the next. Holding a finger on any Web clip causes all of them to jiggle like tiny pieces of digital Jell-O, waiting for you to either delete or drag them around wherever you would like them to stay. Pressing the Home key cements the icons in place.

Trouble Finding Home

But these updates left room for improvement. Maps had trouble on both my iPod touch and iPhone when I asked it to find me in my home in Washington, D.C., and in my office near the White House — the former test circled a 30-block radius while the latter marked me four blocks away. Tests in other locations worked well, and clever “Drop Pin” tools helped me mark and label specific places. But I wouldn’t rely on this feature if I was completely lost and hoping the iPhone or iPod would tell me where I was.

And though I was excited to have email on my iPod touch, this device lacks a speaker and vibrating capabilities, so it can’t chime or buzz to signal newly received email. Because of this, the touch wouldn’t work for me as a serious, everyday tool like the BlackBerry and iPhone.

The free update for the iPhone lets you text message multiple people simultaneously, something the most basic cellphones have been doing for years. But individual responses to these mass texts can’t be seen in the same thread of conversation as that which you started; instead, they generate new text message threads.

On the iPhone and iPod touch, the Maps application now shows hybrid views that combine satellite maps with labeled street names, which are helpful.

The iPod touch is a testament to what can be done on a mobile device without a cellphone carrier’s help. By tapping into Wi-Fi hot spots, which are almost everywhere, I easily checked email, stocks and weather. I had a little more trouble using the Maps application with Wi-Fi because I was more often checking my location while on-the-go in a car or walking.

Collecting Web Clips

I had fun populating the many screens of my iPod touch and iPhone with new Web clips. These are easily added by hitting a “+” symbol at the bottom of any Web page, naming the Web clip and watching it appear on a home screen, often with a colorful accompanying icon like that for AllThingsD.com.

Snapshots of a Web page can be captured and saved in a Web clip by zooming in on a certain section of a page and saving that specific view. This proved helpful when I needed to quickly glance at the Georgetown basketball schedule a few times in one day.

Web applications can be found at www.apple.com/webapps. A game called Ditto involves repeating a pattern on blue, yellow, red and green squares using the touch screen — a digital version of the Simon handheld game. Memory, the old card game, is updated with animated animals on cards. FlyTunes lets users listen to customizable channels from Internet radio, while an app called Floort presents an opinionated topic and asks people to vote on whether they agree or disagree. Even simple Web apps were useful, such as one that turns the screen into a virtual ruler with inches on one side and centimeters on the other.

But it’s good to keep in mind that these are Web applications, and are useless without the Web and/or an AT&T connection.

All in all, Apple’s software updates for the iPhone and iPod touch are exciting, especially because they make home screens much more useful and individualistic. These tiny devices continue to become truly mobile computers.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

Directions Are a Cellphone Call Away

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:01:00 +0000

It’s hard to remember a day when drivers set off on road trips with just a few hand-written directions and the map in the glove compartment for backup. Today, a stop at the computer is for many people almost as essential as a stop at the gas station. With a few keystrokes, anyone can print a list of turn-by-turn instructions from a Web site.

But what about when you need directions and you’re unable to get to a computer? The same companies that you look to for directions on your home PC are eager to help out on your cellphone, including Google, Yahoo and MapQuest. But while the mobile versions of these services are improving, the user interface of a cellphone isn’t ideal for inputting addresses and extracting directions. Even smart phones with larger screens and full keyboards can be hampered by slow Internet speeds.

This week I tried a service that cuts the time it takes to get directions from a cellphone. It’s called Dial DIR-ECT-IONS, and it works as it sounds: You dial the word “directions” into a cellphone (347-328-4667) and speak the address, name of business chain or event to which you need directions. Step-by-step directions are instantly sent to your phone via SMS, or text message.

This isn’t a substitute for phones that have GPS and can give real-time directions, and it may not be ideal for those who need visual cues, like turn-by-turn maps, but it is very convenient on the go and works on any basic cellphone.

The service, from a determined start-up called Dial Directions Inc., is free — except for the cost of receiving text messages on your phone. After the first 30 days of use, a one-line advertisement will start appearing at the bottom of the last text message sent per set of directions (some take multiple text messages to include all of the steps).

In many instances, I found using Dial Directions to be helpful and efficient, a welcome change from squinting to see miniature maps on cellphone screens. It’s smart enough to ask you if you know how to get to the highway, thus saving you from reading directions you already know. I tried the service with a few different cities — you don’t have to be in the city to use it because GPS isn’t involved — and valued the instant gratification of returned results with so little effort.

Dial Directions is still a work in progress. The service prides itself on superb voice-detection technology, but in one instance, it interpreted “New York City” as “Newark, N.J.,” and didn’t stop to check the accuracy of this, forcing me to hang up to restart. And the two other aspects of the service, finding business chains and events, need just a little more time to include a better variety of businesses.

The service was launched in July, but this week marks its expansion to nine metropolitan areas, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento, Calif. The service still isn’t in major cities like Boston and Philadelphia, but these cities and others will be included within the next month, in the company’s attempt to take the service nationwide.

Dial Directions also plans to add landmarks in the next month. I tried asking for directions to the White House and Yankee Stadium without any luck. General terms will also be better integrated into the service. I tried saying “movies” but Dial Directions thought I was saying “Mervin’s” one time and “Arby’s” the next. Just 40 terms, including “hotel” and “gas station,” are usable right now.

I called Dial Directions from a Motorola Razr cellphone, a Research In Motion BlackBerry Curve and an Apple iPhone. All worked well. Since SMS messages are limited to about 160 characters, regardless of your phone, none of the directions came through in just one message; most directions required from two to five text messages. Symbols help to shorten the messages, like using “L @ Maryland Ave. SW” to tell a user to turn left at Maryland Avenue Southwest.

To receive these directions, you must first tell the service what you’re looking for. The female voice representing Dial Directions is friendly and doesn’t sound stiff and robotic. She offers to give instructions on how to use the service if you don’t know how. After telling her what you’re looking for, she asks what city you’re in and where you’re trying to go.

I tried a variety of addresses and intersections; the system suggests not saying “Street” or “Avenue.” In certain instances when a highway was involved, I was asked if I knew how to get on the highway, and if I did, that extra text wasn’t included in my directions. Once I confirmed what I was looking for, the voice said directions would be on the way in a couple of text messages. Each time, they appeared on my phone almost instantly.

In the case of business chains or general terms like “hotel,” the voice told me first of the closest one it knew, asking me to confirm whether or not it had found the right place. If I said no, it suggested four more that were the next closest. This worked well in most cases, including searches for McDonald’s, Bloomingdale’s, Starbucks and pizza. However, in a hunt for the closest Dunkin’ Donuts, it couldn’t find four stores that were located a mile from my office in downtown D.C.; instead, it thought the closest one was in Arlington, Va.

The company pledges that this and other faults will be improved over the next month as its database is improved and as more users report issues that can be corrected.

Directions to local events can be retrieved as long as the event is posted on DialDirections.com. Then anyone can just say the name of the event (like “DC Shorts Film Festival”) to receive directions to that event. But this feature, too, isn’t what it should be right now. On my way to a Washington Nationals game, I couldn’t get the service to recognize the name of my event, which was frustrating.

If the company can correct some of its hit-or-miss aspects, this free service could be a big help, especially for people who don’t own smart phones. But even if you do own a smart phone, it’s faster than typing in data and waiting for a Web browser to retrieve the directions. If this service can improve its ability to find nearby businesses, this alone could be really useful.

When it knows about more locations, Dial Directions will be a great service. As it stands now, it’s helpful for directions from one address to another in certain areas. Sometimes, the most straightforward solutions really do work best.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com