Obama Chooses Steve Jobs Over Google

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We knew President Barack Obama was an Apple fan (he totes a Macbook and an iPad). Now we have more proof.

During his highly-anticipated acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, the President was supposed to give a shout-out to search giant Google. Instead, at the last minute, he opted to praise Apple’s founder.

Here’s the line from Obama’s prepared remarks, as given to the New York Times: “We believe that a little girl who’s offered an escape from poverty by a great teacher or a grant for college could become the founder of the next Google.”

And here’s the line as delivered: “We believe that a little girl who’s offered an escape from poverty by a great teacher or a grant for college could become the next Steve Jobs.”

SEE ALSO: Watch the Obama Speech That Set a Political Record on Twitter

The last-minute switch suggests Obama ad-libbed the line, ignoring what was on his TelePrompTer.

Apple’s founder and CEO, who passed away 11 months ago, was also given a shout-out in Governor Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech in Tampa last week.

Here’s Romney’s line: “Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn’t work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.”

Technically, Romney was incorrect: Jobs quit his post in 1985, after the board refused to back him over a dispute with then-CEO John Sculley (although Jobs would later claim he had been fired).

Regardless, it’s a stunning tribute to Jobs to be mentioned in the speeches of both Presidential candidates. As for Google? Perhaps founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will get a shout-out in 2016.

RunKeeper’s In-App Personal Training Feature is Now Free

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It’s always helpful to have some guidance when starting a new workout routine, or perhaps running your first 5K. Fitness app RunKeeper announced Thursday that its in-app race training feature is now free.

“Whether your goal is to lose weight, complete a race of a certain distance, or do so with a specific time goal in mind, now you can follow a detailed plan from your favorite coach that will tell you what to do each day, and provide guidance in your ear as you are doing it,” Chas Wagner, community manager at RunKeeper, wrote in a blog post.

RunKeeper launched FitnessClasses in 2010 for $10-$25. It partnered with Olympian Jeff Galloway to create four different training regimes that lasted up to 24 weeks. These same plans are now available at no cost to you. RunKeeper also said they made updates to the app’s “visual design, layout, and functionality” and are continuing to make improvements. What you might notice is that you can now sign-up for the workouts in-app versus having to do so on the website like before. The activity history has also been revamped in the app, so your scheduled workouts appear in the future while your previous workouts appear in the past.

SEE ALSO: RunKeeper Partners With GymPact, Now You’ll Pay For Missed Workouts

“We’ve also seen that those of you who follow these plans have had better success sticking with your fitness activities and achieving your goals!” Wagner said.

The update is available on iTunes and will go live later on Thursday on Google Play.

Would a free training program make you more likely to use a fitness app? Tell us in the comments.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD Packs a Punch [HANDS-ON]

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Amazon packed a faster processor in the Kindle Fire HD, and it shows.

The Kindle HD has a new high-definition 1280x800display with polarizing filter and anti-glare technology

The Kindle Fire HD has rounded corners, giving it a less boxy feel than the original Kindle Fire.

Amazon updated the exterior of the Kindle Fire HD to make it feel more like Google's Nexus 7 tablet.

The tablet is both thinner and lighter, and feels closer to Google’s Nexus 7 or Samsung’s &-inch Galaxy Tab

With X-Ray for movies you can tap on the screen and instantly see what actors are in that scene.

Tapping on an actor within X-Ray will bring up a biography of that actor and links to other movies they've been in.

The Kindle Fire HD is the world's first tablet with dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi.

Games can be picked up where you left off between kindle devices.

The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD has USB 2.0 and Micro-HDMI

Amazon has announced the next-generation of its popular Kindle Fire tablet: the Kindle Fire HD. Available in both a 7-inch and a larger 8.9-inch model, the device improves upon the original model, while keeping some of the same features users have come to know and love.

Available for pre-order Thursday, the pint-sized tablet will keep the $199 price point of its predecessor (which saw a price drop today to $169), while buffing up its spec sheet.

One new feature called Free Time allows parents to customize what their children are able to do on the tablet. With support for several different profiles — so you can have one for each child — the feature can let you dictate how much time your child is able to spend doing each activity on the tablet. For instance, you can restrict gaming to just 30 minutes a day, and make reading unlimited on the device.

We got to spend a little time with the all-new Kindle Fire HD after Amazon’s launch event in Santa Monica and were overall pretty impressed with what we saw.

Even if you’re already a Kindle Fire owner, the new Fire is going to feel like a whole new device. The tablet is both thinner and lighter, has rounded edges, and feels closer to Google’s Nexus 7 (although it has a slightly larger bezel) or Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab than it does the original boxy model.

Amazon packed a faster processor in the Kindle Fire HD, and it shows. The tablet loaded up games and movies with ease, and we didn’t see any lag when trying to switch between applications.

The tablet doesn’t appear to be as zippy as Google’s Jelly Bean-toting Nexus 7. But it’s still quick, and easy enough to transition between applications that you’re not likely to notice much of a difference.

X-Ray for Movies will be available on both sizes of the Kindle HD as well as the updated version of the Kindle. If you’re a movie buff, you’re going to get pretty excited about this.

As you’re watching a movie, tapping the top of the screen while a film is playing will bring up the names of all the actors in that particular scene. Tap on those actors, and you can read a brief biography of their work and see what other movies they’re in. The feature is powered by IMDB.

While it did have the device on hand, Amazon wouldn’t let us get our hands on its larger 8.9-inch Fire HD. The device isn’t set to launch until November, so the tablet may just not be ready for the hands of nit-picking journalists.

We did get a little eyes-on time with the 8.9-inch device, and were able to snap a few photos. Boasting a spec sheet similar to that of its smaller brother, the tablet appears to be a steal at just $299.

What do you think of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HD? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

SEE ALSO: Amazon Blows Up the Tablet Market

Apple Working On Pandora-Like Service [REPORT]

 

We know Apple is vehemently against being copied, but the iPhone maker might be taking a page out of Pandora‘s playbook. It may be, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal, creating a similar service.

The music service from Apple would supposedly work with all Apple’s existing products. It would operate similarly to Pandora in that users could select a musician they like and a station would play songs by similar artists.

The WSJ article says Apple is attempting to negotiate its own licensing deals with record companies as opposed to the government-set rates paid by Pandora. The story also suggests this new service might be unveiled at Apple’s big event next Wednesday, Sept. 12.

Apple’s iTunes is a top destination for song downloads, but streaming audio sites like Pandora and Spotify offer up some competition.

Would you use a music service similar to Pandora, but from Apple? Sound off in the comments.

Kindle Paperwhite Has a Screen You Won’t Want to Put Down [HANDS-ON]

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Amazon improved the contract on the display by 25% and added 62% more pixels than the previous version – the result is crisp, easy-to-read text on a screen that is essentially glare-free. If you’re rocking a current-generation Kindle Touch you’ll notice the difference right off the bat.

The built-in light illuminates the screen from the top down, so it feels like ambient light rather than a bright light shining back in your face.

Fonts are available in 6 different styles and 8 different sizes, so you can read at just the right size for you.

One killer new feature of the Kindle Paperwhite is Time to Read. The feature pays attention to how fast you’re reading a particular book, and then displays at the bottom of the screen how long you have left in the chapter and the book as a whole based on your reading speed.

Reading time is displayed in small font on the bottom left of the screen. While certainly a simple feature, it’s one that we can definitely see readers using again and again.

Definitely a help in situations such as: Should you stay up and finish a chapter, or save the book until the morning? Do you have enough reading material for that 6-hour flight, or should you find a new book to download before take off?

The Kindle Paperwhite is available now for pre-order from Amazon ($179 for the 3G version and $119 for the Wi-Fi only model), and is expected to ship on October 1.

When Barnes & Noble released the Nook with GlowLight earlier this year, we suspected that it was only a matter of time before Amazon answered with its own e-reader with a built-in light.

Today we saw that reader in the form of the Kindle Paperwhite. The e-reader has a backlit display, improved screen resolution and new hand-tuned fonts especially for the Kindle. Fonts are available in six different styles and eight different sizes, so you can read at just the right size for you.

The touch-only device — you lose all the buttons with this one — is light, easy to hold, and based on our first impressions, is an e-reader you’re not going to ever want to put down.

During Amazon’s presentation Thursday, CEO Jeff Bezos described the Kindle Paperwhite screen as one that you wouldn’t ever want to turn off — even when you were reading somewhere where you might not necessarily need a light — and we have to agree.

The built-in light illuminates the screen from the top down, so it feels like ambient light rather than a bright light shining back in your face.

In addition to the light, Amazon also improved the contract on the display by 25% and added 62% more pixels than the previous version – the result is crisp, easy-to-read text on a screen that is essentially glare-free. If you’re rocking a current-generation Kindle Touch you’ll notice the difference right off the bat.

While you’re definitely going to notice the light on the screen when you’re reading in a dark room, the display light was exceptionally unobtrusive in the moderately-lit airplane hanger where we were able to check it out. Unlike traditional tablet lights that shine into your eyes causing eye strain over time, the Kindle Paperwhite felt like a white piece of paper rather than a lit up screen.

One killer new feature of the Kindle Paperwhite is Time to Read. The feature pays attention to how fast you’re reading a particular book, and then displays at the bottom of the screen how long you have left in the chapter and the book as a whole based on your reading speed. SEE ALSO: Amazon To Reissue Dickens Novels in Original Serial Format

Reading time is displayed in small font on the bottom left of the screen. While certainly a simple feature, it’s one that we can definitely see readers using again and again. Definitely useful for answering questions such as: “Should I stay up and finish a chapter, or save the book until the morning?” or “Do I have enough reading material for that 6-hour flight, or should I find a new book to download before take off?”

Speaking of reading time, Amazon claims you’ll be able to get an impressive 8-weeks of battery life with the reader, even with the light on.

The Kindle Paperwhite is available now for pre-order from Amazon ($179 for the 3G version and $119 for the Wi-Fi only model), and is expected to ship on Oct. 1.

What do you think of the Kindle Paperwhite? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Microsoft Asks Consumers to Compare Bing to Google Via a Pepsi Challenge

Microsoft is trying a new marketing gambit to get consumers to use its Bing search engine: A blind taste test.

The campaign, called Bing It On, asks users to compare any five search results for Bing and Google side-by-side without knowing which is which, and pick out the results that are the most relevant. Users can do this using BingItOn.com and then find out whether they really prefer Google or Bing. It’s basically the online equivalent of the Pepsi Challenge.

The Bing It On campaign comes on the heels of an independent study of nearly 1,000 Internet users commissioned by Microsoft, which found that people prefer Bing’s search results to Google’s two-to-one in blind comparison tests.

Despite these findings, Bing has been stuck in a distant second place behind Google in the search market. Bing currently has just 15.7% market share, while Google has two-thirds of the market, according to the latest numbers from comScore, though Microsoft’s share jumps to 28.7% if you include Yahoo’s sites, which are powered by Bing.

“We’ve increasingly seen that customers have a tough time breaking their Google habits,” Lisa Gurry, Bing’s senior director, told Mashable. “The use of Google for any search is very habitual, like tapping your foot in a meeting, you don’t really give it a lot of thought. With this campaign, we want to help people realize there is another option for search.”

We reached out to Google for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has tried to battle consumers’ ingrained habits. In February, the company launched a Pepsi Challenge for its Windows Phone that offered side-by-side comparisons to iPhones and Android-based devices. That programhit a glitch the following month when an Android user charged that the competition was rigged. This time around, Microsoft is going all out by promoting the Bing It On campaign during the MTV Video Music Awards on Thursday and in Microsoft stores around the country.

Microsoft is also launching a sweepstakes to promote the Bing It On challenge. Anyone who tweets about the campaign using a link found on Bingsweeps.com will be entered to win one of several Microsoft prizes including a Surface tablet, Xbox, Windows phone and more.

While the Bing It On campaign is a fun idea, it could also end up backfiring on Bing. When this reporter took the test, Google won five out of five rounds.

Amazon FreeTime Gives Parents More Control Over What Kids Watch

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Along with its new line of Kindle tablets, Amazon unveiled a feature called FreeTime that “reinvents parental controls” at a press event on Thursday.

Kindle FreeTime lets parents control what media their children have access to, and for how long they can access that media. Need to put a cap on the amount of TV shows your child watches on their device? That’s possible with FreeTime.

“With FreeTime, parents never have to worry what content their kids will access—parents select all of the content their kids can see and kids can’t exit FreeTime without a password,” reads an Amazon press release.

“FreeTime also lets parents limit their kids’ screen time by content type—they may choose to limit videos and games, for example, but make reading time unlimited.”

FreeTime supports several profiles, meaning parents can change the settings in one Kindle so the controls will be different for each child. The service will be available for free on all of the new Kindle Fire devices in the coming weeks.

Would you use FreeTime? Tell us in the comments.

Photo by Emily Price