Geek News and Musings

Follow the Mobile User
This guest post is written by Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering for Google’s mobile and developer products. (Prior to Google, he spent 15 years at Microsoft, most recently as their GM of Platform Evangelism.) Vic credits his now-7-year-old with forecasting the importance of mobile data access, and now carries at least 4 phones at all times. Fortunately, he had two kids before adopting the possibly-prophylactic habit.

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Focus on the mobile user, and all else will follow Simpler data, better browsers, and a smoother experience Today the mobile industry finds itself in a unique position to do right by its users: Worldwide phone penetration continues to climb at a break-neck pace, with over 4 billion mobile subscribers at last count.¹ (In comparison, the PC industry is forecasted to see its sharpest unit decline in history.²) Prevailing economic conditions will accelerate this trend, as users consolidate pricey communication services into cost-effective, all-in-one mobile devices.³ And for the first time ever, half of all new connections to the internet will come from a phone in 2009.⁴ Google’s mobile traffic reflects these milestones — having quintupled since 2007⁵ — and it underscores users’ appetite for mobile data services. But as a community of operators, device manufacturers and software providers, we continue to get in their way. In short, and as a general rule, we make it too costly, too unfamiliar, and too difficult to do anything beyond voice calls. In reply I offer up three suggestions: simpler data plans, better web browsers, and a smoother on-device experience. And in each case I’ll use Google traffic numbers as a proxy for total internet usage and user happiness.

This Week’s Most Popular Posts [Highlights]

Time for a look back at all the productivity goodies you loved this week on Lifehacker.

If you missed too many posts over the course of the week, your Lifehacker eyes may be bigger than your productivity stomach. Consider giving our top stories feed a try, or get really specific with your own customized feed. Here are this week’s best posts:

• Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities
  It’s the little things that make a Windows system great-like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
• Five Best Web Browsers
  It’s probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week’s Hive Five.
• Turn an Old Laptop into a Wall-Mounted Computer
  Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? Lifehacker reader Justin took an old Sony Vaio laptop he wasn’t using and turned it into a wall-mounted computer.
• First Look at Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Beta
  The name’s ridiculous, but “Jaunty Jackalope,” the next release of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is seriously focused on the user experience.
• Ramit Sethi on Getting Rich and Automating Your Money
  Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and the same-named blog, answered a few questions recently about managing and automating money.
• Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others
  Web site Academic Earth is like Hulu for academic lectures, pulling free lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale into one attractive, easy to navigate site.
• Killer Typography Tools and Free Font Downloads
  Whether you’re putting together a resume, flyer, or web page, everyone needs to find and compare fonts some time. Here are some tools that can help you find the perfect font.
• Switch to a Two-Week Grocery Cycle to Waste Less Food
  The Green Cheapskate Blog cites studies showing that the American grocery shopper wastes 25 percent of their purchased food-if not more. Switch to an every-other-week shopping regimen, and you might start throwing less money away.
• 101 Recession-Busting Free Sites and Downloads
  PC World just published my (Adam’s) big old compendium of great free web sites and downloads. They’re calling it 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, but you’re Lifehacker readers, so you’ve seen most of them at some time or another here.
• Create Edible Gummy Shot Glasses
  Trying to figure out what to serve your skittles-infused vodka in? Why, a flavored gummy shot glass, of course. ShesParticular at tinkering haven Instructables uploaded a ridiculously simple tutorial on making your own gummy shot glasses.
• Make Your Home Dust-Proof
  Cut down on the time you spend dusting and make the air in your home healthier with a few simple tips.

Fizy Is The Speedy Gonzalez Of Music Search

Check it out before it gets blown off the interwebs: Fizy is probably the simplest, most powerful and fastest music search engine I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. Seemingly designed for mobile browsers rather than traditional web browsers, it lets you dig up virtually any song you’re thinking of and stream it in a heartbeat.

It’ll even display an associated video if it can detect one, and you can easily share songs - which come with dedicated URLs - on a wide variety of social networking services.

That’s about all it does and it does that pretty well; I was even able to find songs from one of my favorite bands, Blackbox Revelation, which is not always the case with these types of new services. Fizy claims it can pull up about 75 billion MP3s thanks to access to over 50 different APIs, and the speed is probably the most amazing thing about it and also the main differentiator compared to the plethora of similar services. Bonus points for setting up the service with an international audience in mind: Fizy supports nearly 30 languages to date.

It’s completely web-based, it’s gorgeously limited in features, slick and superfast.

That makes it as addictive as it is illegal, and that’s why I’ll be missing it when it’s gone. That could take some time, since there’s no address or name mentioned anywhere on the site, although a quick WHOIS lookup points in the direction of Turkish company beril tech.

In the meantime, thank you for the music!

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Best Mind Mapping Software? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

Brainstorming is an important part of hashing out ideas, and mind mapping has gained popularity as a method of getting ideas out there and arranging them in an easy to understand way.

This week we want to hear about how you map out your ideas. What software do you use to construct mind and concept maps? Which one makes it easiest to get the ideas out of your head? What makes the software you use so awesome? Whether it’s ease of use, great compatibility, or you just love the interface, we want to know what makes your tool of choice great.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Favorite Mapping Tool. Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: “Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Hive Five: Five Best Web Browsers. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five, drop us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five Idea” in the subject line.

Best Mind Mapping Software? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

Brainstorming is an important part of hashing out ideas, and mind mapping has gained popularity as a method of getting ideas out there and arranging them in an easy to understand way.

This week we want to hear about how you map out your ideas. What software do you use to construct mind and concept maps? Which one makes it easiest to get the ideas out of your head? What makes the software you use so awesome? Whether it’s ease of use, great compatibility, or you just love the interface, we want to know what makes your tool of choice great.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Favorite Mapping Tool. Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: “Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Hive Five: Five Best Web Browsers. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five, drop us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five Idea” in the subject line.

Best Mind Mapping Software? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

Brainstorming is an important part of hashing out ideas, and mind mapping has gained popularity as a method of getting ideas out there and arranging them in an easy to understand way.

This week we want to hear about how you map out your ideas. What software do you use to construct mind and concept maps? Which one makes it easiest to get the ideas out of your head? What makes the software you use so awesome? Whether it’s ease of use, great compatibility, or you just love the interface, we want to know what makes your tool of choice great.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Favorite Mapping Tool. Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: “Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Hive Five: Five Best Web Browsers. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five, drop us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five Idea” in the subject line.