10 favorite gadgets of 2009

If you're still looking for a gift, the Times' Technology staff has compiled a list of our 10 favorite gadgets of 2009. Check out the full list, with details.

What's powering Web apps: Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5 [Updated]

Of all the things Google is really good at, patience isn't necessarily one of them.

To prove Web applications like Gmail and Google Docs could be as sophisticated as desktop apps, Google created its own desktop software a couple years ago -- a small utility called Gears. Once it's installed on a user's computer, features like offline caching of e-mails and drag-and-drop file uploading would be unlocked.

Many of those features are beginning to be adopted by HTML5, the next revision to the standard programming language that powers the Web.

For the time being, Gears will still feature a number of tools that can be opened using Firefox and Internet Explorer. The technology is built into Google's Chrome browser.

As Google prepares to release its first beta version of Chrome for the Mac (a developer preview has been available for months), the company is letting the sun set on its Gears project.

"We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites," wrote a Google spokesman in an e-mail.

That's great, but HTML5 isn't ready yet, and commercially available browsers don't support it.

Save our bookmarks: Yahoo's Delicious should become an aggregator

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter left Yahoo in 2008 and now works for Google. Credit: Joi via Flickr

Yahoo's social bookmarking website Delicious is looking less appetizing nowadays.

Once the king of online link sharing and a pioneer in the concept of tagging content, Delicious has been eating all of the wrong things as of late. The site hadn't changed significantly since Yahoo bought it in 2005. Until recently.

Over the last four months, the site has undergone a spiffy redesign, gotten a prettier mobile site and improved search features, filtering and graphing. The most recent announcement details its integration with other Yahoo properties, mainly Yahoo Updates.

What the heck is Yahoo Updates? Looks like a Twitter clone that practically no one is using.

All of these changes appeal to the few niches that still use the site. Graphic designers will appreciate the resurfaced interface and statistics geeks will love the info overlays and doodads.

Delicious is failing to address the elephant in the room -- that over the last few years, start-ups and big players have emulated all of its original features and helped them reach a wider audience.

'Turkey' searches on Google experience annual surge

Sorry, Istanbul, we're looking for the bird.

Despite there being an entire country named Turkey, it's the yearly American Thanksgiving traditions that leads to a huge boost in Google searches for the term.

Check out the graph at the top illustrating searches for the word "turkey" over the last five years, courtesy of Google Trends.

As you can see, the massive jolt comes around Thanksgiving every year and a smaller one comes around Christmas time.

Google hasn't yet updated its search statistics for today, but we can already see an uptick toward the end of the graph.

Over the last five years, Turkey the country has maintained the top spot where people are searching for "turkey," followed by Britain and the U.S. But during November, it's USA all the way.

"Tryptophan," the amino acid that causes drowsiness after large consumptions of turkey, also sees a stratospheric jump in late-November. We're surprised Web surfers manage to stay awake long enough to type that in -- let alone spell it correctly.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Music streaming app Spotify comes to the U.S. early next year

Perhaps the most-hyped music service coming out of Europe is making its way to American shores early next year.

Spotify's desktop software lets users stream from a massive catalog of music for free.

The ad-supported service is hugely popular in the six European countries it currently operates in. And for good reason.

The program is in many ways more sophisticated than similar services, like Napster and Rhapsody. The interface is simple and lets users arrange playlists that automatically sync between machines. And it's free -- supported by ads.

The premium version, which costs 10 euros per month in Europe (U.S. pricing hasn't been announced yet), lets users stream via mobile apps and store songs in playlists using digital rights management (DRM) on a computer or smart phone for offline listening. The application also sells many songs in its catalog.

We've been testing Spotify for the last few weeks, and it's absolutely blowing us away. Check out our impressions of the service on Pop & Hiss: Spotify plans to rock the U.S. digital music landscape early next year.

-- Mark Milian

Is 'Pulp Fiction' screenwriter Roger Avary tweeting from jail? [Updated]

Roger Avary pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter in September and may be tweeting from jail. Credit: Los Angeles Times

As is often the case with Twitter, screenwriter Roger Avary recently tweeted about what he had for lunch. It was soy, which, an acquaintance told him, contains a dangerous substance intended to shrink their genitals and reduce their sex drives.

Just another day in Ventura County Jail.

Avary, who won an Oscar for writing the "Pulp Fiction" screenplay, appears to be sending updates to Twitter from the big house. He received a jail sentence in September after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter following a fatal crash last year.

We can't confirm that the Twitter account, @avary, actually belongs to Avary. But a second account, @rogeravary, points to the companion profile and contains photos of sci-fi author Neil Gaiman and the Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer.

[Updated, Nov. 27, 2:40 p.m.: L.A. Now reports that Avary was tweeting while serving time in a Ventura County work furlough program. He is now in full-time custody.]

Betting that Brizzly will be huge, ex-Googlers are working on things

Thing Labs in their San Francisco office. Chris Wetherell, middle left, and Jason Shellen, middle right. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

The mad scientists at Thing Labs have a very impressive track record.

On the sixth floor of a trendy building in San Francisco's recently renovated Mint Plaza, four former Google employees -- scratch that: five former Googlers, with today's addition of FriendFeed's (now Facebook's) Ben Darnell -- and a few others are working on things. Some very interesting things.

Founder Jason Shellen is purposely fuzzy with his description of ongoing projects. Whereas Google famously has "20% time," a policy that lets engineers spend one-fifth of their day working on anything they want, Shellen says his workers get "100% time."

For the last five months, the majority of that time has been spent building Brizzly, a Web application that combines your Twitter and Facebook profiles into a single interface.

After gaining some viral interest through its invitation-only sign-up system -- a strategy that has worked exceedingly well for Gmail and now Google Wave -- Brizzly is unlocking its doors today. Anyone can sign up and plug in their social network credentials.

But Brizzly remains in beta despite having tens of thousands of users. The product is ahead of most desktop apps in its stability and interface but is not yet a replacement for Facebook because you can't fully browse friends' profiles, view events or upload pictures. And the app currently lacks some newer Twitter features like geolocation, which is available in only a few programs anyway, and standardized retweet, a project originally spearheaded by Thing Labs' vice president of technology, Chris Wetherell.

So why should you care? There's plenty of websites and apps for accessing Twitter. TweetDeck and Seesmic, like Brizzly, can pull in Facebook as well. And while Brizzly is stuffed with potential even now in such an early stage, Shellen's track record hints that there's much more to come.

Techmeme's Gabe Rivera makes news aggregation profitable

Gabe Rivera, founder of news aggregator Techmeme. Credit: Mark Milian/Los Angeles Times.

Don't tell News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, but technology news aggregator Techmeme is raking in profits.

Rather than visiting the front pages of every newspaper or choosing a few out of brand loyalty, as Murdoch hopes consumers will do, aggregators put all of the Web's big headlines of the moment onto one page.

There's no shortage in news aggregation. General news readers might go to Google News, a computer-generated engine that pulls in more than 25,000 newspaper websites and authoritative blogs. Left-leaning political consumers might visit the Huffington Post; right-leaning ones might go to Drudge Report.

For tech news, Techmeme, with its smart computer algorithm for culling interesting links, is at the top. A space once dominated by sites like Slashdot and Digg, Techmeme is now the undisputed top influence for the Bay Area tech elite.

Today Techmeme launched a mobile site that's formatted for smart phones to appease news junkies on the go.

It sounds almost laughable that a 4-year-old property, being such a powerful voice in tech, took this long to build a phone-optimized interface. But Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera is not trying to build a trendy, cutting-edge site with its own comment system and social media share features.

Rivera is, to an extent, mimicking the medium that loudly whines about his breed of aggregation. "It feels like a newspaper," Rivera said over lunch last week in San Francisco. "It feels like something you can rely on."

Students can research books on their iPods.... But will they?

Questia Library Plus iPhone app. Credit: Questia

We'll spare you the obvious "there's an app for that" joke. But you can get a library's worth of books on your phone.

Questia, an online research portal for students, announced its application today for reading books, articles and periodicals on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app costs 99 cents for 5,000 public-domain books and a week of unlimited access. After that, users can buy a two-week subscription for $9.99.

There are so many things wrong with this we don't know where to start.

For one, students don't like to buy things. Especially digital things. Many strapped-for-cash college kids aren't buying songs at a dollar a pop. Why would they buy books they can find free in their university library or on Google Books?

But you get the convenience of reading and browsing on your iPod, right?

C'mon, have you ever tried reading anything substantial on that tiny screen? The Kindle app is great, but we can't get through a chapter without our eyes bursting into flames.

Two universities recently rejected the Kindle DX device as a replacement for textbooks, in part because it lacks features like advanced notation and text-to-speech. (Considering that the alternative is a paper book, their issues are kind of absurd, but that's for a different discussion.)

If they didn't like the Kindle, imagine what they'll think of a device that's about a quarter of the size.

The Questia app is a decent implementation of a very niche idea. If you're planning to actually do research with dozens of sources, you'll be better off with more fully featured alternatives, which includes Google's academic offerings and Questia's own desktop-friendly site.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

On Brightkite, ladies' night never ends

Two teens listen to music and send text messages on their cellphones in a coffee shop. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times.

When Jonathon Linner describes his social networking website Brightkite, he sounds more like a savvy nightclub owner than the chief executive of a bleeding-edge Bay Area start-up.

Whereas most new technologies tend to favor the early adopter -- a generally male-skewed, try-everything, fad-friendly crowd -- Linner is focusing on a different audience: hot girls.

"Guys will go where the hot chicks are," Linner said over lunch a few months ago. "The target demographic is a girl in college," he reiterated in a recent phone interview.

How do you get girls in high demand to cozy up to a social network that asks users to pull out their phones and check in multiple times a day? Linner employs what he calls "the ladies' night approach."

"Bars do things to make women come there -- reduced-price drinks or free drinks," he said. "So we do things in our system to make it more inviting to women."

Brightkite's landing page is bubbly and colorful with cute cartoon characters and an emphasis on words like "simplicity."

Compare that to competing location-based network Loopt, with its shiny, sleek buttons and big map overlaid with widgets. Or the smaller but much-hyped website Foursquare, which is quick to highlight that it plays nicely with high-end smart phones.

When adding new features, Linner and his 32 or so employees have to take care not to tick off Brightkite's pioneering female users.

For example . . .