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(Credit:
What If Widgets)

Meet Jack. Jack hates tangled earphone wires. He’s a bit of a neat freak, actually, but that’s good news for you. Jack would just love to help you keep your cords free from tricky twists and gnarled knots, if only you would give him a chance. Just throw your earbuds over Jack’s shoulders, twist the cable around his neck and feet, stick the plug in his hand, and Jack’s a happy camper. Chances are you will be, too, because instead of spending time detangling cords, you can get right to listening to your music. Jack will even hang contentedly from the wire while you rock out. Jack is made by What If Widgets, which is donating 5 percent of every sale to hearing health organizations, so you can give back while getting something in return. If you’re interested in starting a relationship with Jack, you can pick him up at places like Amazon.com for $9.

Like online financial services such as Mint and PageOnce, Orgoo requires you to put a whole bunch of login credentials in the hands of a third party, something I don’t think most people are comfortable with. The upside to that is you can manage and use five or more e-mail accounts and talk with all your chat buddies in one place–all without any software. You can read our original hands-on with the service here.

Awesome Web 2.0 communications de-cluttering tool Orgoo is set to open its doors in the next couple of months. Its creators wouldn’t pin down an exact date to me, but they have been nice enough to give Webware readers 500 invites to use the system in full before it’s open to all (go here to get yours). The expansion of the beta is the last step before going open, and is for both scaling servers and getting more user feedback.

I’ve been using the tool on and off since I wrote about it in September of last year. I prefer its mail UI to Fuser, a similar service that’s recently begun to integrate a slew of third-party services like Facebook’s news feed and microblogging services like Twitter. Orgoo has taken a slightly more focused approach, expanding its compatibility with e-mail services and IM networks. Most recently, it dipped into multi-user video chat, which launched back in March.

I think the real benefit from this, other than safety, is that you never have to buy or replace batteries. Just keep the Anklelite near your bike gear, and in the sun, and it’s ready to go when you are.

This Anklelite is a solar-powered floodlight. According to Pedalite, users can expect at least three hours of use from the light in strobe mode; however, it doesn’t say how often it will last when not being used as a strobe.

As a child, if I rode my bike after dark, I’d have to rely on my bike’s reflectors and, occasionally, a flashlight to keep me visible. However, today’s cyclists have gadgets like the Pedalite Anklelite to help keep them safe.

(Credit: SmartPlanet)

(Via SmartPlanet)

No word yet on when the product will be available from Pedalite North America, but it’s going on sale in the U.K. for ?10 (about $18) in December.

According to Pedalite, “The Anklelite’s robust design and versatility enables it to be also used as an arm light on the upper or lower arm–perfect for jogging, cycling or riding.” It can be used as a strobe or a solid light. Also, says the company, it’s weather- and impact-resistant, so it should survive the occasional fall or rain shower.

The Pedalite Anklelite is a solar-powered floodlight that can help keep you safe when cycling after dark.

Not that Apple is reserving this customer disservice solely for iPhone application developers. It also takes a pound of flesh from its
iPod and iPhone accessory developers. How?

proprietary authentication chip in its portables that makes it impossible for third-party companies to create iPod- and iPhone-compatible accessories without signing an often costly agreement with Apple…(As just one example), most of the manufacturers interviewed (by Macworld) estimate that up to $20 of the retail cost of iPod and iPhone speakers is directly attributable to fees levied by Apple. Ouch.

As Macworld explains, Apple requires “officially licensed” iPod and iPhone cables on new models. Apple enforces this with a:

I’m an Apple fan. I have been spending a lot of money on Apple products for years. But I’m also in the software business, and can’t imagine treating my own partners as poorly as Apple apparently treats its developer partners.

Ouch, indeed. Apple’s tight grip on its partners means higher costs and a degraded experience, at least in the case of the iPhone App Store.

Take Apple’s management of the
iPhone App Store. Apple has been delaying updates to iPhone applications by a week or more, and apparently without any communication to its developer community as to why the delays are happening, or when to expect an update to go live.

I don’t have a problem with updates being reviewed (by Apple prior to posting), but it has to go a lot faster…Given the no-demos rule, an app lives or dies by App Store reviews. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch review after review complain about a bug that you fixed and “shipped” two weeks ago.

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In other words, Apple’s lack of communication and service is hurting its developers, who already have to give up a big chunk of revenue from application sales to Apple. Apple is making them pay for poor service.

That’s the developer’s problem, right? Exactly, as Fraser Speiers, owner of Connected Flow (Exposure Flickr application on the iPhone), details:

Microsoft grew to be a multibillion-dollar company by largely catering to its partner ecosystem. Apple? Fan I may be, but it’s almost sickening to see how condescendingly the company treats its partners.

Apple lost once because of its inability to appeal to a broad developer base. If it isn’t careful, it will end up alienating its iPhone, iPod, and
Mac developer communities, pushing them back to Microsoft, over to Google’s Android platform, or elsewhere.

One has to wonder if Apple must exert so much control in order to deliver a superior customer experience. Reading through the October 2008 edition of Macworld magazine, I was troubled to read about Apple’s poor treatment of its partners.

(Credit:
Rafe Needleman / CNET)

Feature of Firefox 3: Will look like a native app on each platform: Windows,
Mac, Linux. Less of the “Firefox look,” more native. Of couse, will support skins so you can pick your favorite look. Most everything is in the same place, but the back button is about twice as big.

Mike Schroepfer, VP of engineering: Next beta of
Firefox 3 will be beta 5. It comes out next week. Will be the last beta before release candidate 1, which is due for May. Firefox 3 should ship for real in June (or before, if possible).

Faster is good.

That’s it for the demo.

For another CNET perspective on this meeting, see a post from News.com’s Charles Cooper: With Firefox 3, Microsoft has reason to worry.

Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla VP of engineering

Question from my Twitter followers: What about Firefox on the iPhone? Response: “Apple has not written a license that allows it to happen. We’ve got other places we’re paying attention to, but that’s not one of them.” We note that Schroepfer, as well as Mozilla CEO John Lilly, both have iPhones sitting on the table in front of them. Still, they say, both iPhone and Android are closed platforms. What they are interested in is a truly open platform, they maintain. “That’s coming,” they say. Look at the Nokia N810.

New history/bookmark technology: Stored in a local relational database, replacing the old-school tech from previous version. New tech is more reliable and higher performance. What it means to users: more browser history is stored by default (instead of just 14 days), and will be instantly accessible and searchable.

The “awesome bar:” This is what they call the new address entry field. It has very useful autofill and search, since “people are moving to search as a modality” of how they use the browser. It combines search with your history, and it’s adaptive, based on what you historically click on. Tries to divine what you want even if the search term is ambiguous.

Regarding the complaint, “You’re eating all the RAM in my machine:” They say they’ve made it better, “better than anything out there.” Firefox 3 uses less memory than other browsers, and more importantly, releases that memory when tabs close. Also, during an extended browser session test, Firefox 3 is much better behaved and doesn’t chew up memory and slow down. Schroepfer says
IE 8 can’t pass the test they’ve written, and neither can Safari 3.1. They both crash.

Regarding Microsoft: The company’s stated support for open standards (like CSS 2.1) is “a huge win for the Web.” But “I wouldn’t call it ‘vigorously embrace,’” Schroepfer says. Still lots of old standards not used.

Update: Meeting swag.

Address bar also checks for phishing exploits, lets users pull info from certification authorities.

After the roundtable discussion, I had a good talk with Chris Beard, Mozilla’s director of labs. A post on that is forthcoming.

“Better, faster, safer” is a focus. Firefox 3 will scan for malware (Firefox 2 already checks for phishing). Actively checks sites. Updates internal pattern database every 30 minutes. Compare to IE, which uploads site URLs to Microsoft to check. Mozilla says its version offers more privacy, but at Mozilla’s expense to push the pattern database over the Net. In early beta, this technology found that the site supporting a popular extension (Firebug) had been compromised.

On offline access: Firefox will support HTML 5, which has a spec for offline access. This will make Google Gears obsolete.

Mozilla claims better memory management in Firefox 3.

I’m at a Mozilla “open house” sitting around a table with about 10 other bloggers. Lots of history is being discussed here; the 10th anniversary of Mozilla will be celebrated on Monday (Firefox 1 came out two years after Mozilla started). Check back on this post for practical tidbits from this meeting.

New password manager: doesn’t pop up and interrupt, but does give you the opportunity to save the password after you see if you’ve successfully logged in. Won’t sync passwords across systems yet, but a new Mozilla project, Weave, will make this possible in the future.

Performance/memory improvements: Hundreds of fixes, reflected in benchmarks. Maybe three times faster than Firefox 2. Testing on Gmail: it’s two to four times faster than Firefox 2. Much faster on SSL sites (like banking), too.