Faster Forward - Technology News, Observations and Occasional Rants by The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro - September 20, 2009

Welcome to MMS, iPhone Users

Since Apple's iPhone debuted two summers ago on AT&T Wireless, its users have had to put up with a not-so-secret shame: If somebody with a lesser cellphone sent them a picture or video message, they couldn't read it on their phones without visiting a special Web site and tapping in...

The FCC Sides With Net Neutrality; So Do I

You could say that today's column started when I saw those Sprint ads with the guy in the trench coat bragging that he had the Web right on his phone. Those ads were ridiculous back in the day, but the 3G connections and thoroughly Web-enabled smartphones available now -- for...

Comedy Is an Uninvited Guest at Microsoft's 'House Party'

Microsoft has produced its share of quirky marketing messages, but a YouTube clip produced to promote a series of Windows 7 launch parties is a special sort of odd. Oh, so very special. The idea, as veteran Microsoft reporter Todd Bishop reported earlier this month, is that Windows 7 fans...

Google Adds Faces, Places Features to Picasa

Yesterday, Google shipped a new version of Picasa, its photo organizer and editor. Picasa 3.5, a free download for Windows XP or newer and Mac OS X 10.4.9 or newer, adds a name-tagging feature formerly reserved for Google's Picasa Web Albums site and improves the old version's geo-taggging option. Those...

Can You Make Comcast's Digital Transition Without a Cable Box?

Over the past year or so, I've devoted a reasonable amount of ink and pixels to a sideshow in the digital-TV transition: cable-TV operators' separate, unrelated upgrade from analog to digital systems. That second conversion is now picking up speed in the Washington area: Comcast, the largest cable provider here,...

FCC Chief Outlines Net-Neutrality Plans