Google launched a new look for its Android Market today at an event at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., including a long-missing and much-requested Web-based version. Available at http://market.android.com, the new marketplace features a robust search tool and allows users to install apps directly from the Web.

Having an Android device isn't required to access the new marketplace, although you obviously won't be able to install apps without one. To get started, visit the market and log in using your Google account, the same as the one you use for your phone or tablet. You can browse app categories on the left, or filter by tabs showcasing featured apps, top paid apps, and top free apps.

When the Market debuted earlier in the day, most people saw "invalid request" messages when attempting to log in. A tweet from the Android development account indicated that Google had begun working on the problem, and by 12:15 p.m. PT most were able to log in successfully. It's not clear at this time whether the delay was caused by an overload of people attempting to access it at the same time, delays in syncing users' apps, or other unknown problems.

One of the keys with the Market is to log in using the same account that's been associated with your mobile device, since your apps are now synced directly to that Gmail account.

Once logged in, there's very little that's different to visually indicate that you've successfully logged in. You can tell, though, because the upper right corner of the Web page will show your e-mail address and a link to "My Market Account". Click it and you're taken to a My Orders tab that lists all your installed apps. These are organized by date last updated, the name of the app, category, price, and status. Currently, these headings can only be sorted by date, although it looks like the kind of layout that will receive an update with more sort parameters in the future.

A second tab labeled Settings currently shows only a list of the devices associated with your account. It shows Nickname, Visibility, Make, Model, Carrier, Last used, and Registered on date. Clicking the Edit button on the right lets you give the device a nickname, and choose whether to hide the device from Android menus. Users who have rooted their devices and are running custom ROMs will not see data for Make and Model.

It appears that multiple, simultaneous account log-ins, a feature recently pushed to Gmail, are not supported.

At the top of the new Market lives a persistent and slick search option. Enter a query and a black bar appears between the bottom of the search box and your results. Click it to reveal search filters to narrow your results. You can install an app directly from the results, or click through to learn more about each app. When you do hit the install link, the Market will let you choose which device to install the app to, as well as show you a list of permissions that the app uses, and its cost. You can also push an app to multiple devices as long as they're associated under the same account.

At least on Verizon's 3G network, an app I installed from the Web site began downloading within 60 seconds of hitting the install button. This was also reflected in the My Orders list. However, it took me jumping into the Market app itself before the new app would appear on my phone. It's not clear whether this is part of the app store's regular behavior, a factor of heavy Market traffic, or another cause entirely.

Previously, the app-to-account sync and push had only been available through third-party markets. The new Android Market does lack features that third-party markets like AppBrain offer, such as customized app lists and uninstallation.

Update, 11:25 a.m. PT: Added Twitter comment from AndroidDev. Update, 1:00 p.m. PT: Noted that the Android Market now appears to be accessible to most users, if not all, and added details on how to use the new Market.

More coverage:

Google announces Web-based Android Market

Google's Android Honeycomb demo (live blog)

Ever wish you could turn a certain Grammy-nominated Cee Lo Green song--you know the one I mean--into a ringtone for your iPhone?

There are apps for that--lots of them, in fact, all capable of converting virtually any track in your song library (not just the hilariously NSFW ones) into a ringtone or calendar/alarm tone.

If you want a few extra features not found in the freebie ringtone makers, check out Ringtone Remix Pro. It's a simple, elegant tool that makes the process painless.

All you do is choose any DRM-free song stored on your iPhone, then slide a pair of selectors along an audio waveform to choose the section you want. The app lets you zoom in on the waveform so you can get ultraprecise with your selection, making sure the ringtone starts exactly where you want it.

There's also a magic-wand icon that chooses a song chunk for you, deftly avoiding quiet spots in the audio--but not necessarily choosing an optimal start point for the ringtone. My advice: choose it manually.

Once you've selected and previewed your ringtone, a quick tap of the Save button turns it into an iTunes-friendly M4R file. From there you have three options: e-mail the ringtone to yourself (or a friend), sync it with your Dropbox account (a feature I believe is unique to Ringtone Remix Pro), or fire up iTunes and use its File Sharing feature to add it to your Ringtones library.

The app has a link to a tutorial video, but it shows only what to do with e-mailed ringtones; there's no help with Dropbox or File Sharing. Plus, the link itself is accessible only after you tap Save; it would be nice if you could view it whenever you wanted.

Speaking of nice, I wish apps like these could automatically add newly created ringtones to your iPhone, instead of forcing you to jump through iTunes hoops. But at least the creation part is easy. If you have a buck to spare and want a potentially limitless supply of new ringtones, Ringtone Remix Pro gets the job done.

Is there a ringtone maker you like better? If so, hit the comments and make with the name!

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

BlackBerry maker RIM has announced a change to its BlackBerry App World applications sales front that will gratify both developers and owners of BlackBerry smartphones.

Starting today, BlackBerry App World 2.1 will now let users buy features within an app in stages.

In-app payments already constitute a popular billing model within the smartphone world, particularly among gamers who can purchase access to new levels. Their use lets developers offer apps for free, then gradually up-sell certain features to the user, instead of charging for an entire game or app up front.

A new payment service on RIM's back end is behind the introduction of in-app payments. BlackBerry App World updates will begin today, but not all storefronts will immediately update on all BlackBerry smartphones.

The Mac App Store launched less than one month ago, to promising fanfare and download stats.

I was extremely excited about the Mac App Store, well before it even existed. In fact, I was dreaming of the existence of just such a thing over a year ago. In my mind, it was the beginning of a fusion between Apple's iOS and its venerable OSX operating system--perhaps, even, the beginnings of the inevitable crossover between portable smartphones/tablets and "regular" computers. I liked the idea of an App Store's convenience, its one-stop shopping, and its consolidation of software updates.

And yet, I haven't used it much at all.

Why? Well, to be honest, some reasons are personal. Others are logical. But, maybe, they point to what's broken about the App Store for Mac thus far. Some of these issues might simply be the result of the App Store being stranded in Snow Leopard, an early rollout that was perhaps initially intended for deeper integration into Apple's next OS X, Lion. Others might resolve as the App Store has more time to mature. Still, here's what's bugging me so far.

The land of $80 apps
Some apps in the App Store are free. Others cost nearly $100. Compared with the 99-cent economy of the iPhone App Store or even the sub-$10 iPad App Store, the Mac App Store is all over the map in terms of pricing. That's because many apps in the store are software also available in boxes--professional applications, which have traditionally cost a considerable amount of money. Other apps are ports of iOS hits, such as Flight Control. A great example of the disconnect is SketchBook Pro. On the iPad, it cost me $9.99. On the Mac, an "Express" version is free, while the full version costs a whopping $79.99. I might be tempted to drop as much as $10 on an art app to inspire me to doodle, but there's no way I'm impulse-buying at $80. While the free version is nice enough for many, the extreme cost of a "premium" app is jarring compared with the iOS App Store economy.

Missing apps
It's easy to name games and apps that aren't in the Mac App Store--so much so that it's painfully apparent that the App Store is only one avenue for any Mac owner. So what's wrong with choice? Nothing, except that software updates no longer are easily consolidated through a single channel, making a chunk of the App Store's appeal useless. Between Steam, the App Store, and Apple's own Software Update utility, I'm still stuck checking multiple sources for updates. Missing apps also means that any attempt at app research in the App Store is an incomplete process. I'll always need to check other sources, and if I make Google my first stop instead of the App Store, chances are the App Store will lose my purchase.

On a computer, my browser is the ultra-app
The concept of apps on smart devices, initially, was to slice up discrete functions that mobile browsers and operating systems just couldn't handle easily. On a full-fledged computer, most app functions can be handled amply by browser-based cloud computing. For instance, photo editing, word processing, social networking, video streaming--these are all browser-based for me, but app-based on my iOS device. On a computer, there are fewer "killer apps." Meanwhile, full-sized applications (also considered "apps" in the App Store) have deeper functionality, but higher prices (see above).

One app to fit them all
Is it too much to ask for more developers to finally offer Universal Apps that are one purchase across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac? I don't want to buy Flight Control three times. Developers might tell me to suck it up, but at the very least there should be a simple account-based method of scanning all purchased apps across all devices, along with cross-compatibility.

I need an App App
iTunes is far overloaded as a syncing solution for iOS devices. It makes more sense for all apps (iPhone/iPod/iPad) to be managed in a separate app. An App App. I want this app to allow me to delete apps I don't use much, and re-download them easily when needed, without trying to remember or guess whether I've purchased them before. I want simplicity. Right now, it's very odd that the Mac App Store runs outside of iTunes, while the iOS App Store on the Mac runs within it.

The best App Store is the one you have with you--and that may not be your laptop
My dad was in the hospital recently. When I was visiting him after work, I brought my iPad and my iPhone with me. They're lighter. I browse apps on the iPad and iPhone because these devices are on me almost all the time. Meanwhile, my MacBook stays at home. In fact, honestly, even when I'm at home, my MacBook gets opened less and less frequently--only for certain tasks. The App Store you use is the one you have on you, and how many of us keep our laptops close to our person?

That's not to say the Mac App Store doesn't have some aspects that do work quite well--easy browsing of apps can be appealing to Mac newcomers, and there are plenty of free apps to make a thrifty window-shopper satisfied. These are extremely early days for the Mac App Store, and hopefully many of the above issues will be settled by this time next year. Then again, hope only takes a techie so far.

How are you feeling about the Mac App Store so far--happy, angry, or utterly disinterested?

Originally posted at Crave

Weeks after Google announced it would drop support for H.264-encoded video from Chrome, Microsoft announced it's adding support back in through a browser extension for Windows 7 users.

"Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video," said Claudio Caldato, principal program manager on Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team, in a blog post. The software can be downloaded from MIcrosoft's Web site.

The move matches what Microsoft already did with Firefox, which unlike Chrome never supported H.264 in the first place. Mozilla, Google, and Opera prefer the WebM video-streaming technology and its VP8 video codec in particular, which at least for now doesn't require the patent royalty payments that H.264 does for browser makers and those offering for-fee video over the Net.

And the move also points a way through the video codec mess that currently prevails on the Web. Microsoft, and possibly Apple, could offer H.264 plug-ins for use by browsers that don't support it, and Google could offer WebM plug-ins for the opposite situation. Indeed, Microsoft said Google is working on such a plug-in for Internet Explorer on Windows.

That solution doesn't make life much easier for Web site operators trying to decide whether they need to support both technologies or just one, though, unless a large fraction of people install such a plug-in or unless the Web developer is willing to fall back to Adobe Systems' Flash Player.

A requirement to license patents--from a group called MPEG LA in the case of H.264 patents--is antithetical to the World Wide Web Consortium's ethos for open Web standards. "In order to promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue recommendations that can be implemented on a royalty-free (RF) basis. Subject to the conditions of this policy, W3C will not approve a recommendation if it is aware that essential claims exist which are not available on royalty-free terms," the W3C's patent policy states.

H.264, also called AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and MPEG-4 Part 10, definitely has patent issues. It's not yet clear how free WebM and VP8 are, though Mozilla expressed confidence and Google offered royalty-free use of VP8 technology it acquired when it bought On2 Technologies in 2010. MPEG LA, though, has a different view.

"We do not believe VP8 is patent free," the organization told CNET in a statement in late January. "There continues to be interest in the facilitation of a pool license to address the apparent marketplace desire for convenience in accessing essential VP8 patent rights owned by many different patent holders under a single license as an alternative to negotiating individual licenses."

The nascent HTML5 standard includes built-in video support in an attempt to make video as easy to use as, say, JPEG graphics on the Web today. But Google's move spotlighted a rift in the HTML5 standards world: because of differing views on the appropriate codec, neither H.264 nor VP8 nor any other codec is specified. And with Microsoft and Apple pushing one way and the other three browser makers pushing the other way, it doesn't look like there will be any resolution any time soon.

In a blog post today IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch expounded on Microsoft's earlier position, mostly reiterating the company's concerns about the possibility of VP8 patent infringement and Microsoft's willingness to accommodate a WebM plug-in.

"The only true arbiter of infringement, once it's asserted, is a court of law," Hachamovitch said, suggesting one way Google could protect WebM users would be through an indemnification pledge to protect them in the event they're sued for patent infringement. "If Google were truly confident that the technology does not infringe and is not encumbered by patents whatsoever, wouldn't this indemnification be easy? It's one way to move away from conversations about unknown and unbounded risk to a rational conversation about costs and liability."

Microsoft is one of the many patent holders whose H.264 patents are licensed by MPEG LA, and Hachamovitch had an offer for Google if it does offer indemnification:

Ultimately, Microsoft remains agnostic in terms of HTML5 video as long as there is clarity on the intellectual property issues. To make it clear that we are fully willing to participate in a resolution of these issues, Microsoft is willing to commit that we will never assert any patents on VP8 if Google will make a commitment to indemnify us and all other developers and customers who use VP8 in the future. We would only ask that we be able to use those patent rights if we are sued first by somebody else. If Google would prefer a patent pool approach, then we would also agree to join a patent pool for VP8 on reasonable licensing terms so long as Google joins the pool and is able to include all other major providers of playback software and devices. The entire industry benefits from a significant investment in an ecosystem around a format well insulated from legal issues. As JPEG taught the industry, profitable companies merely wishing IP issues away does not make those issues go away.

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google is working on a plug-in to bring WebM to Windows, and Microsoft is helping with that work, Hachamovitch added.

"Our support for H.264 results from our views about a robust Web and video ecosystem that provides a rich level of functionality, is the product of an open standards process like the W3C's HTML5 specification, and has been free from legal attacks. Microsoft is agnostic and impartial about the actual underlying video format for HTML5 video as long as this freedom continues," Hachamovitch said. "Our commitment to play WebM videos in IE9 for users who have installed WebM demonstrates our approach. We have worked closely with Google to help them deliver a WebM implementation on Windows and Google engineers are on the Microsoft campus this week; we appreciate their positive feedback to date around this work."

VP8 appears to deliberately sidestep H.264 patents, Carlo Daffara said in a blog post in January:

...It is clear that most design decisions in the original On2 encoder and decoder [which became VP8] were made to avoid preexisting patents...By going through the H.264 "essential patent list," however, I found that in the US (that has the highest number of covered patents) there are 164 non-expired patents, of which 31 specific to H264 advanced deblocking (not used in WebM), 34 related to CABAC/CAVAC not used in WebM, 16 on the specific bytecode stream syntax (substituted with Matroska), 45 specific to AVC. The remaining ones are (to a cursory reading) not overlapping with WebM specific technologies, at least as they are implemented in the libvpx library as released by Google (there is no guarantee that patented technologies are not added to external, third party implementations).

Further details are available in his earlier analysis.

Updated 8:33 a.m. PT with comment from MPEG LA and further details.

Originally posted at Deep Tech