Google Starts Shipping Nexus 7 Tablet

Pre-ordered the Nexus 7? You’ll get this baby in your hands soon. Image: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

To all of you who ordered a Nexus 7 in the last few weeks, you can expect a 7-inch package delivery on your doorstep soon. Google announced on Friday that it has started shipping the pre-orders of its first self-branded tablet.

Google made the announcement in a cute and rhyming Google+ post: “Locked and loaded, ready to play: we’ve started shipping +Nexus 7 pre-orders today!” The company first unveiled the Nexus 7 tablet at Google I/O at the end of June, along with the Nexus Q and Android Jelly Bean. Pre-orders opened up at that time to anyone who wanted to shell out the very reasonable $200 for Google’s first tablet.

But those who attended Google I/O got to take home the Nexus 7 earlier than the rest. And the device, designed by Google and manufactured by Asus, has already received praise for hitting a sweet spot in terms of price, build quality and media capabilities. Though the Nexus 7 directly competes with the Kindle Fire, which shares the same 7-inch form factor, Wired reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles found that the Nexus 7 outperforms the Fire on several levels.

Amazon, however, already has plans to release a refreshed Kindle Fire soon, according to several reports. And if rumors prove true, Apple also has a 7-inch iPad in the works. It will be interesting to watch how this new, smaller-form tablet arena plays out. For now, Google’s Nexus 7 is a top contender and it will arrive in even more hands very soon.

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Review: Give Your iPad More USB Mojo With CloudFTP

Photo courtesy of HyperDrive

If there’s one big gotcha on mobile devices — phones and tablets alike — it’s the lack of widespread USB support. Some Android devices have SD card slots or USB ports, but the tablets lack the power to run bus-powered USB drives. And Apple’s mobiles famously have neither SD nor USB support built in.

But at long last, CloudFTP, one of the most successful gizmos ever funded by Kickstarter, fills in this missing USB link.

Connect any USB device to the CloudFTP box, and it becomes accessible on your phone or tablet via an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. It works with cameras and card readers as well as storage devices that require bus power. Connect a USB drive, and that drive essentially becomes a wireless file server. Also, any data stored on the USB drive becomes cloud-accessible — create a cloud backup, or transfer files to and from services like Dropbox.

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Inside Google’s Fascinating Stash of 10,000 Indoor Maps

When Google announced it had added 20 additional museums to its indoor mapping service Wednesday, the most interesting part of the story was treated as just a throwaway factoid in the company’s blog post: There are now more than 10,000 indoor maps available to Android device users.

10,000 indoor maps. You can consider this proof positive that Google is making headway in its effort to chart every nook and cranny of navigable terrain, even if this includes carpet and linoleum.

Even more noteworthy: A great many of these floor plans weren’t created in partnership with Google. Instead, they were uploaded by users — business owners and institutional leaders who were motivated to make their properties just a bit more open to all. A steakhouse in Massachusetts. A camera store in New York City. Even the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. More and more pioneering spirits are using Google’s self-service tool to upload their building layouts for everyone to see.

But there’s a caveat: It’s nearly impossible to find most of these indoor maps, unless you happen to stumble upon one during your day-to-day use of the Maps app. Or unless you read Wired.
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Report: iPhone 5 Will Be Announced August 7

Tim Cook closes the 2011 ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event. Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired

If the latest report ends up proving true, we could be seeing the next iPhone launch sooner than expected. A “reliable industry source” told KnowYourMobile that the next iPhone will be unveiled during an August 7 Apple keynote. The next iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6, is also expected to be officially released at the same time.

Last year, the iPhone 4S debuted October 4 and went on sale a week later. The iPhone 4 was launched in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference the year before that. This year, Apple has largely been expected to unveil the next-generation iPhone in either September or October.

A late-September to early-October launch puts the iPhone in a good position for holiday sales, giving Apple the full span of its holiday quarter for beefy profits and sales numbers. An August launch feels a bit early for us, but Apple shook things up with the launch date of the iPhone last year, so it’s certainly in the realm of possibility.

Forrester analyst Charles Golvin told Wired that the main benefit to an August launch would be to take advantage of the back-to-school buying period. But given Apple would still need to get FCC approval by that time, Apple could face more challenges in making the new iPhone available in its stores and through operator channels to tap this opportunity. “I believe that the more likely scenario is that Apple will release the new iPhone in September-October and focus on the Christmas selling season, which is the most significant sales opportunity,” Golvin said.

Regardless of when the iPhone does officially debut overseas, enterprising sellers on a Chinese website are letting iPhone fans pre-order or order an iPhone 5 even though it hasn’t been announced yet.

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Dongle Makes Any iPod Dock a Bluetooth Speaker

The little dongle that can make your old docks useful again. Photo: Kickstarter

As the market fills with wireless Bluetooth speakers like the Jawbone Jambox, those old iPod speaker docks that force you to, you know, actually physically connect hardware like some sort of troglodyte are starting to look at little lame. It’s especially tough if you’ve switched from iOS to another platform. Now the speaker dock just sits there collecting dust! Well, break out the feather duster; there’s a product to turn all those docked dust-traps into wireless Bluetooth speakers.

A new Kickstarter project called the Pear connects to the 30-pin connectors of iPod/iPhone docks and transforms them into wireless Bluetooth speakers. Not only does this give new life to old docks, it also extends the docks to support Android devices. Perfect for switchers. And if Apple ever does ditch the 30-pin connector, a Pear will future-proof your old speaker sets.

According to the developers, if you can pair a Bluetooth headset, you can pair the Pear. Having your device send audio wirelessly to a speaker frees it up to stay with you. This is especially helpful for social media butterflies, or anyone waiting for an important call. The phone stays with you instead of held hostage by the dock.

A $40 pledge will get you a Pear when the devices go into production, far cheaper than a decent set of Bluetooth speakers.

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