TechCrunch
Parallels Launches Access For iPad, A Virtualization App That Gets Windows, Mac Apps To Work Like Native iOS Apps
Timed to coincide with VMWare’s big conference this week in San Francisco, one of its bigger rivals, Parallels, today is unveiling a new app that takes its own virtualization software to a new screen: the iPad. Over a year in the making, Parallels Access for iPad is not the first tablet-friendly product released by the company — an existing-but-now-discontinued product, Parallels Mobile, works on both the iPad and iPhone — but it is the first one dedicated specifically to making software and documents from Windows and Mac machines work in a “native” way on the iPad, by transforming everything into an “app” experience, complete with iOS gestures to control them.
The move taps into the bigger trend we have been seeing among enterprises adopting tablets as more portable laptop replacements, and also the consumerization of IT, where workers use their own tablets to supplement their work PCs, to get things done when on the move.
“We are now in an always-on age where people are increasingly demanding access to their applications and data regardless of physical location,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels, in a statement. “With Parallels Access, you can tap, swipe and pinch your way around Mac and Windows applications to ultimately be more productive at work, and lead a more connected life.”
The new app, which is priced at $79.99 for a one-year subscription covering one device (each subsequent device that gets virtualized costs another $79.99), comes with a number of features:
App Launcher. This effectively makes the files and applications on the virtual machine appear like a set of apps on the iPad home screen. These then can be tapped like apps to launch.
App Switcher. This is a nice feature that effectively creates a dock that hides when you’re not using it, where apps that you have open can sit for easy swapping.
Gestures. As with other Parallels virtualization software, you can use the selection tools that are part of the desktop apps that you are using, but what Parallels has also created are features that effectively apply the gestures that you’re used to on the iPad to the virtualized files. For example, you can select words with a finger and then drag them, and use the same actions to copy and paste as you would in an iOS app. Similarly, you can double tap to zoom, and scroll around documents as you would on an iPad-native page. All pages can be expanded into full-screen mode, too.
Keyboard. Here, the keyboard effectively is an iOS keyboard, but into it Parallels has also incorporated shortcuts that effectively port over the entire keyboard of the virtualized device as well, with shortcuts to F keys and the rest.
For those who find the idea of using iPad gestures and tools too jarring when editing a Power Point or Excel document, they can revert to using the same actions they would use on the virtualized machine — much as they would have with Parallels Mobile.
One of the engineers that headed up the development of Access tells me that the app was over a year in the making, as Parallels worked out the precise way of rendering whatever was on a virtual machine as a “native” iPad experience.
With more enterprises adopting tablets instead of laptops for roaming workers, and consumers making the leap to buying tablets as second computers, Parallels Access makes these tablets supremely more useful, and highlights just how versatile they can be. Of course, they also highlight how Apple had yet to bridge this virtualization gap itself.
A Parallels spokesperson tells me that the app is launching with full Mac support, and with the Windows virtualization support in beta. The company is also planning to support other platforms at some point in the future.
StackOverflow Co-Founder Jeff Atwood Builds A $150 Keyboard For Coders (And Others Who Type All Day)
If anyone knows far too much about their keyboard, it’s a programmer.
Professional programmers type a lot. A whole lot. So much that a flame war over which text editor/input method is best for coding (Vi! No, Emacs!) has roared on for decades.
It makes some sense, then, that a well-known coder has taken to building his own keyboard.
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of the super popular coding Q&A site Stack Overflow and author of the blog Coding Horror, has just debuted a project he’s been working on for the past year and a half: a keyboard called CODE (lovingly dubbed after one of his favorite books on programming… and, you know, the word “code”.)
To get the job done, Atwood teamed up with Weyman Kong of WASD Keyboards — a guy who builds custom keyboards for a living.
Here’s Atwood’s own words on why he decided to build a keyboard:
I was indoctrinated into the keyboard cult when I bought my first computer. But I didn’t appreciate it. Few do. The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys.
Taken for face value, it’s just another keyboard. Hell, it probably looks a bit antiquated, like something you’d see in any dusty old computer lab around the world. Love it or hate it, that actually seems to be the point; it’s a throwback to the keyboards of yesteryear, tweaked with a few lil’ touches that only someone who types all-damn-day can appreciate:
- Mechanical key switches: You remember how keyboard keys used to let a resounding, satisfying click when you pressed a key? That was due to the mechanical switches, which keyboard makers have moved away from outside of their specialty lines for cost/engineering reasons.
- Backlit keys: Until pretty recently, finding a keyboard that was both backlit and mechanical was a challenge (though, at this point, most of the major keyboard makers have at least one with both.) CODE has both. The backlight can be set to any of 7 brightness levels, or disabled all together.
- Easily swappable keys so you can switch the arrangement of your keys (to QWERTY, Dvorak, or whatever) without worrying about the switch underneath busting apart.
- DIP switches on the bottom of the keyboard let you switch between QWERTY/Dvorak/Colemac at a hardware level, disable the Windows key, swap CMD/ALT for use with Macs, or turn the caps lock key into a back up CTRL key.
- Media (Play, pause, etc.) keys built in as secondary functions on the navigational keys — that is, holding the Fn key turns INSERT in Play/Pause, PgUp into Volume Up, etc.
- Comes in both 104-key and 87-key (read: no number pad) variants, since some consider the num pad a nuissance that just makes them reach further for their mouse.
In fewer words, it’s the dream keyboard of a guy who has probably typed more than you and me combined.
While that $150 price tag seems a bit steep (especially if you’re just using whatever keyboard came with your desktop, or the one built into your laptop), it’s right around the going rate for a mechanical/backlit keyboard from one of the big guys. Logitech’s G710? $150. Razer’s BlackWidow? $139.
You can find Atwood’s post about his keyboard here.
Google Dumps Video Responses From YouTube Due To Dismal .0004% Click-Through Rate
Google is ditching video responses from its video sharing site on September 12th, encouraging users to fall back on hashtags and descriptions to surface videos in searches. The cited reason is a minuscule .0004% click-through rate on video responses submitted by users.
To illustrate, says the YouTube team, only 4 out of every 1 million users bothered to click on those little boxes underneath the main video. Efforts will theoretically go into providing new and different tools to increase fan engagement for creators.
The notice was posted on YouTube’s Creators blog because that’s really who this affects. Video responses were designed to create a way for bigtime YouTubers to foster a conversation and increased interaction with their fans. A video response would appear attached to a video, increasing exposure for the responder and demonstrating that a conversation was happening around the posted video.
Now, YouTube says that the best thing to do is to encourage fans to use the video titles, hashtags and descriptions to explicitly associate them with the video that they’re responding to. Then, creators can search for those videos to find them and move them into playlists and channel sections
Current video responses will still be ‘available and discoverable’, says YouTube, but since they weren’t’ really being watched in the first place it’s hard to care much.
Google is in the final stretches of overhauling YouTube to be the channel-based juggernaut it thinks it can be — a true competitor to television. But if it’s going to do that it’s not just going to need to find a way to duplicate what TV already does well but to enhance the things that it can do without the strictures of the channel structure. In other words, yes, make people comfortable by starting with channels, but utilize the unique network effect of YouTube, which has made it the number one music service for teens and so many other superlatives.
Anyhoo, it will be interesting to see where YouTube takes the video engagement tools from here. Hopefully people will click more when they do.
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