MobileCrunch |  |
- AliveCor Turns Mobile Devices Into Low-Cost Heart Monitors, Raises $3 Million
- Phone Radiation Measurement App Maker Tawkon Raises $1.5 Million
- Forkly Enters The Soon-To-Be-Stuffed Mobile App Taste Space
- Android (Finally) Taking Steps Towards WebKit And Chromium
- Source: The iPhone 5 Will Indeed Be A Dual-Mode CDMA / GSM ‘World Phone’
- HP Pre 3 Will Never Come To US, But It’s Crazy Cheap In Europe
- Microsoft Demos Xbox/Windows Phone Link With Giant Cats
- The iPhone 3GS Is Free From Best Buy Today Only
- Nokia’s Symbian Belle Teaser Gives Us Exact Arrival Date, Fails To Tease
- Square Makes iOS Apps Speedier, No Longer Requires Signatures For Transactions Under $25
- Updated V Cast Brings Live Sports, 250+ Channels, And A New Name: Verizon Video
- Microsoft Wooing WebOS Developers With Free Phones And Training
- Sony Ericsson Reveals “Live With Walkman” Android Smartphone
- Kno Turns Textbooks 3D (Video)
| AliveCor Turns Mobile Devices Into Low-Cost Heart Monitors, Raises $3 Million Posted: 23 Aug 2011 04:53 AM PDT  AliveCor, developer of a low-budget electrocardiogram (ECG) recorder that works in conjunction with a variety of mobile platforms (including iPhone, iPad, and Android devices), has raised $3 million in Series A funding, the company announced this morning. The financing round was led by Burrill & Company along with Qualcomm, acting through its venture investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures, and the Oklahoma Life Science Fund. AliveCor’s credit card-sized wireless device is capable of turning iOS and Android smartphones and tablets into low-cost heart monitors that can be used by patients at home and by physicians and other healthcare providers in a clinical setting. See video below for a demo of the iPhone version. Note that the device isn’t for sale yet – AliveCor’s products haven’t yet been cleared as a medical device in the United States. It’s also unclear exactly how much it will cost, but earlier coverage by the Wall Street Journal mentioned a $100 price point. The company says it will now use the capital to complete clinical studies currently ongoing at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, pursue those necessary regulatory approvals, and gear up for commercial launch of its electrocardiogram recorder. AliveCor has developed a device that will turn any smartphone into a clinical-quality electrocardiogram (ECG) recorder.
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| Phone Radiation Measurement App Maker Tawkon Raises $1.5 Million Posted: 23 Aug 2011 02:43 AM PDT  Tawkon, an Israeli startup that offers mobile apps capable of measuring cellular radiation, has secured seed funding to the tune of $1.5 million. The capital injection comes from thetime, an investment company owned by Ilan Shiloah, chairman of McCann Erickson Israel and Nir Tarlovsky, and from Tzvika Barinboim. Other backers include management consulting company TASC, Don Perrin (one of Zipcar’s earliest investors) and Yossi Sandler, an early investor in Yedda (which was acquired by AOL). Tawkon’s offers mobile apps for Android phones, BlackBerry handsets and the iOS platform, although the iPhone app only runs on jailbroken devices. You see, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made it abundantly clear that Tawkon's phone radiation measurement application is not welcome on its official App Store, pushing the startup to make it available for free (again, for jailbroken iPhones) through Cydia instead. Last March, Tawkon had sent an email to Jobs in the hopes of gaining approval for distribution of the application through Apple's App Store, only to receive this response from the man, the legend:
Well, at least his disinterest hasn’t spooked investors too much. tawkon is a mobile phone application that gives users information & tools to avoid mobile phone radiation , with minimal disruption to normal phone usage. tawkon monitors and analyzes...
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| Forkly Enters The Soon-To-Be-Stuffed Mobile App Taste Space Posted: 23 Aug 2011 12:34 AM PDT  Remember last year when it seemed like everyone was doing a location-based mobile app? One of the original players in that space, Brightkite, eventually got overshadowed by newer rivals. Now two of its founders are back with a new mobile startup, and once again they’re entering a space that is quickly getting crowded: food. Specifically, Brady Becker and Martin May have just launched Forkly into the App Store. While we’ve known about the company for almost a year, and known generally what they were doing for several months, it took quite a long time to get to this point. Now it’s here: an app for sharing and discovering food and drinks. If this sounds familiar it’s because you’ve heard of Foodspotting, the popular food picture app that now has a million downloads. Or maybe you’ve heard of Nosh, the new “Instagram of food” from a founder of Google Voice that launched recently. And those are just two competitors. There are many others, and trust me, many more coming in short order. But to its credit, Forkly looks very solid. Unlike Foodspotting, which focuses mainly on pictures, Forkly focuses more on ratings (Nosh focuses on both). You can “like” an item, “love” it, say it’s “okay”, or “not for me”. Forkly then uses this information to build up a “taste graph” for each user. This is then used to serve up other items you may like. Or you can see new items served up to you in a social feed. And you can easily flag something to note that you “want it”. And you can write short reviews, etc. There is also a gaming element in that users become “influencers” for recommending foods and drinks that others like. Forkly also smartly offers tools for food bloggers, restaurants, and brands to use the service right off the bat. These could end up being the key stand-out features in the space. You can read more about that in their post. So will Forkly be able to do what Brightkite could not — be the breakout of red-hot field? Considering that half of the competition hasn’t even launched yet, it’s way too early to tell. Being early didn’t help in the location space (in fact, you could argue that Dodgeball, which eventually led to the creation of Foursquare, was way too early), but it could here as startups race to get the most foods and ratings in their systems. You can find Forkly in the App Store here. Forkly makes it ridiculously easy to match your taste buds with the food and restaurants around you. Capture and share your tastes while dining out, and Forkly will help you...
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| Android (Finally) Taking Steps Towards WebKit And Chromium Posted: 22 Aug 2011 05:46 PM PDT  Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android? It’s a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they’re finally taking steps to resolve this. A bit. Maybe. As a group of Googlers have announced on the WebKit-Dev group today (relayed by Google’s Peter Beverloo), the Android team is now committed to working more closely with the WebKit community. Yes, it’s a bit odd that a product so devoted to “open” wasn’t really working with the open source community before — but hey, better late than never. Writes Andrei Popescu:
The full story is a bit more complicated than it appears on the surface. While Android has its own separate browser which isn’t branded as “Chrome”, the two do share some code. But they’re not the same, and two separate teams work on each. For whatever reason, Google chose not to brand the Android browser as Chrome, and doing so now may cause some confusion since there’s Chrome OS — another operating system built by Google that’s unrelated to Android. So here’s what happening now: Google’s Android team is going to start making available another, slightly modified build of the Android browser, which will be fully open source. Think of it as Chromium to Google’s Chrome. Android-specific code will be removed and presumably, anyone will be able to use this code to build a new mobile WebKit-based browser. Here’s all of that in tech-speak:
What makes the especially hard to follow is that it sure sounds like the Google plans to call this open source version of the Android browser Chromium as well. It will just be a new flavor. Perhaps that’s not so bad since there are already Windows, OS X, and Linux flavors (and the Android one will be really close to the Linux one given the underlying OS technology they share) — but the finished product for all of those operating systems is called Chrome, on Android it still won’t be (presumably, anyway). Follow all of that? Yes, it’s still confusing, but regardless, this is a welcomed step in the right direction. Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of... Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed...
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| Source: The iPhone 5 Will Indeed Be A Dual-Mode CDMA / GSM ‘World Phone’ Posted: 22 Aug 2011 04:21 PM PDT  The upcoming iPhone 5 will almost certainly be a single phone that supports multiple networks, namely CDMA (such as the one used by Verizon or Sprint in the United States) as well as GSM (which is used by AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S.). This has been rumored before, and even at one point half confirmed by a Verizon executive, but nothing like some good old evidence from the field to turn a rumor into a near-certainty. I was recently approached by a developer of some of the most popular apps on the iOS platform today, who asked not to be named and offered solid proof that supports the above claim. According to this person, and app usage logs I was sent, a tiny number of people have recently registered for one of their applications from a single, brand new Apple device that is decidedly dual-mode – meaning it supports both CDMA and GSM. The logs show that the app has been briefly tested by a handful of people using what is almost certainly an iPhone 5, evidently running iOS 5, sporting two distinct sets of mobile network codes (MNC) / mobile country codes (MCC). Those codes can be used to uniquely identify mobile carriers. Sure enough, some registrations for the app – which the developer also asked not to be named – were logged from a new Apple device, using the MNC/MCC codes from both Verizon and AT&T. The first iPhone was a GSM phone released on June 29, 2007 exclusively on the AT&T network in the United States. On February 10, 2011, a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 for Verizon made its debut. Now that Apple is catering to both carriers (and their respective networks), it makes all the sense in the world for the company to combine support for both CDMA and GSM in a single device, turning it into a ‘world phone’ or a ‘global phone’ as the cool kids would say. In addition, rumors have been circulating since last year that Qualcomm would replace Intel as the baseband supplier to the iPhone 5 smartphone. Notably, Qualcomm already supplies the baseband to the CDMA version of the iPhone 4, but not the original GSM version of the device. An Apple-made ‘world phone’ would be great news for consumers, especially those in countries where certain carriers use CDMA (the U.S., India, Japan, Argentina, Brazil and more). Travelling abroad with a phone that only supports CDMA, in particular, is a major pain in the ass. With a dual-mode iPhone 5, users will be able to roam between both networks effortlessly. If all of the above checks out – and all signs point to yes, overwhelmingly so – that would mean the soon-to-be-unveiled iPhone 5 probably won't be an LTE device, perhaps disappointingly so for some who still hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a 4G iPhone in spite of mounting evidence that such a handset wouldn’t be coming out this year. The 5th-generation iPhone is expected to be globally released in Q3 2011, inline with the release of iOS 5, the next generation of Apple’s operating system. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer,...
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| HP Pre 3 Will Never Come To US, But It’s Crazy Cheap In Europe Posted: 22 Aug 2011 02:24 PM PDT  On the heels of the HP’s first and likely last webOS fire sale, word has come from across the pond thatthey’re also deeply discounting the cost of the newly-launched Pre 3 smartphone in most European markets. While it was originally available for the princely sum of £299 in the U.K. and €349 in France (both around $500), HP’s price evisceration brings the cost down to a remarkably reasonable $75 sans contract. Germany won’t be benefiting from price cuts because all the units have already been sold, believe it or not. Phenomenal deal though it may be, it comes with a bit of bad news for domestic webOS fans. HP had hopes for controlling the webOS ecosystem from end to end, and without the TouchPad, it would seem they don’t see the need to launch the Pre 3 in the United States. It’s a shame, really: the Pre3 was HP’s last chance at relevance in the smartphone market, and more than a few webOS diehards were waiting more or less patiently for it. If you’ve got money in your pocket and a yearning for webOS in your heart, feel free to import it when it goes on sale “shortly.” Be warned though, in spite of the Pre 3′s above-average specs, expect some spottiness when it comes to coverage. T-Mobile users will be relegated to EDGE speed, and AT&T will have partial 3G coverage at best. [via PCMag]
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| Microsoft Demos Xbox/Windows Phone Link With Giant Cats Posted: 22 Aug 2011 01:26 PM PDT  Microsoft’s been touting Windows Phone 7′s Xbox Live functionality since day one, but it’s always felt just a little lacking. You can look at your cute little avatar and play games that bump up your gamerscore, but where’s the connectivity with the Xbox experience we saw in demos like this one? It would appear the folks in Redmond aren’t quite there yet, but a demo at their GamesFest in Seattle on Monday morning shows us that the idea hasn’t fallen by the wayside yet. Microsoft and the Kinectimals team showed off a novel method of moving a furry friend from within the Kinectimals Xbox game onto a Windows Phone. Players who have grown fond of the pets on their Xbox can have the game generate a QR code that can be scanned by the Kinectimals mobile app. While on the phone, players can take photos with the camera and strategically their pets in them for kicks. When players grow tired of carrying their little digital tiger around, the app generates a similar QR code that gets scanned by the Kinect camera and the pet gets reimported into the game. Geekwire has the whole demo on video, for those having trouble imagining it: The Kinectimals connection is part of Microsoft’s plans to strengthen the ties between their immensely popular Xbox Live platform and Windows Phone 7. Frankly, it’s about time: it’s one thing for Microsoft to use the Xbox Live brand to garner their mobile OS some gamer cred, but it’s nigh-useless if that experience doesn’t deliver. As WPcentral points out, the only other game before Kinectimals that featured any sort of integration with its home counterpart was Full House Poker, which allowed gamers to transfer their winnings between play sessions. Between today’s demo and the concepts they’ve already come up with, Microsoft is looking at potentially owning a large part of the mobile gaming space if they can just get their A-game on.
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| The iPhone 3GS Is Free From Best Buy Today Only Posted: 22 Aug 2011 10:24 AM PDT  If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t need the latest and greatest, it may tickle your fancy to know that Best Buy is giving away the iPhone 3GS. The sale will only last through today, and is only available to customers signing a new two-year contract with AT&T or renewing their contract. The iPhone 3GS has been going for $50 on-contract from AT&T for a while, but getting an iPhone for free is pretty rare indeed. Then again, Best Buy has to make some room for another very special Apple product that’s on its way. Can anyone guess what that might be? Anyways, the 3GS has already passed its second birthday (that’s basically a centennial in phone years). With a two-year agreement, you’ll be toting around a phone made in 2009 around the same time that the iPhone 7 comes out. By then, who knows the extent to which your 3GS specs will be out-dated. Best Buy Co., Inc. operates as a specialty retailer in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe. It offers consumer electronic video products, such as televisions, digital cameras... Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer,...
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| Nokia’s Symbian Belle Teaser Gives Us Exact Arrival Date, Fails To Tease Posted: 22 Aug 2011 08:59 AM PDT  Teasers are tricky. Companies have to find a way to get you excited about something without telling you what that something is, which can be difficult. It's especially difficult to keep the secret product under wraps when the teaser file is named after the product. That said, Nokia's Symbian Belle teaser is now more of an announcement than anything else, and we now know the update will be available August 24. Posted to Facebook, the teaser says "It's almost time to try something new," with a countdown timer that will reach 00:00:00 on Wednesday. Problem: when it was originally posted, the animation file was called "Belle teaser," discovered by Pocket-Lint. Shortly after, the file name was changed to “teaser.” So much for keeping things mysterious. Well now that we know the "when" of the situation, we might as well get acquainted with the "what" of Symbian Belle. Various leaks lead us to believe that a drop-down notification system will be included in Belle, along with a multi-tasking tool called Task Switcher. A new app store may also be in-tow. If you absolutely can't wait to get a glimpse of Symbian Belle, this is a video leak of an N8 running the new OS: Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications corporation. It is primarily engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries. They make a wide range...
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| Square Makes iOS Apps Speedier, No Longer Requires Signatures For Transactions Under $25 Posted: 22 Aug 2011 07:55 AM PDT  Disruptive mobile payments company Square has pushed a number of new updates to its iPhone and iPad apps today and rolled out a redesigned and updated website. First, the apps are speedier and transaction speed has improved, says the company. The company actually eliminated a number of screens for the transaction process and payments can be completed in as little as four seconds. Additionally, Square will will no longer require signatures for transactions less than $25. Of course, this saves time at the cash register and a number of credit card companies already don’t require signatures for transactions under $25. The company also has enabled the recently launched, ‘pay with your name’ feature to all merchants, so anyone can opt-in to the directory listing and can add a ‘card case’ to make payments quicker and easier for their customers. As we wrote in May, Square debuted a virtual card case that consumers fill with 'cards' of all the merchants they visit and buy from who accept Square. These mobile cards include locations, merchant contact info, coupons, order and purchase history and more. One of the more interesting features was the ability to ‘pay with your name.’ In a merchant's card within the case, you can press a "use tab" button which allows the frequent customer to essentially put a purchase on their virtual tab with Square at the merchant. So once you press that button within two blocks of the merchant, you'll be able to tell the cashier your name and your card will be charged on the merchant's backend Square register. Because you are a repeat customer, Square already has your payment information. The purchaser will then receive a push notification when the merchant processes the payment. Another update in the new version of the app is a new and improved the tipping interface for transactions, which is sure to make merchants in some service industries happy. Merchants can also add $0.00 items in transactions. This is particularly useful for added items like extra mayo or a pickle, where a merchant wants to keep track of what’s being added but isn’t charging for the item. Square is undoubtedly growing at a fast clip. Square has shipped more than 500,000 credit card readers, is processing more than a million transactions per month. The startup is now processing $4 million in mobile payments daily (and $100 million per month), and COO Keith Rabois told us in July that he expects the company to double this volume by October. And international expansion is part of the next phase of growth for Square. Square is a revolutionary service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere. Square offers an easy to use, free credit card reader that plugs into a phone or...
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| Updated V Cast Brings Live Sports, 250+ Channels, And A New Name: Verizon Video Posted: 22 Aug 2011 07:42 AM PDT  Verizon has updated its already awesome V CAST video app, which will henceforth be called Verizon Video. The updated app will work with select 4G LTE and 3G handsets on Verizon's network, and offer access to a number of major broadcast and cable channels. ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, Animal Planet, Disney Channel, CNBC, Comedy Central, and ESPN are all included on the app, along with a number of others. Verizon promises access to over 250 full-episode TV shows, as well as sports content from NFL's RedZone, NBC's Sunday Night Football, and access to the NFL Network. The app is available in the Android Market for brand new customers, who will also get to watch select NFL and Indycar clips for free. Existing subscribers will be notified when the update is ready. For a 24-hour pass, the Verizon Video app will cost $3, whereas an unlimited monthly subscription costs $10/month. Verizon Communications Inc. delivers broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s largest wireless network that...
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| Microsoft Wooing WebOS Developers With Free Phones And Training Posted: 22 Aug 2011 06:41 AM PDT  In the aftermath of HP’s decision to axe all WebOS products, the question for many a developer is “what’s next?” While I’m sure a few WebOS diehards will continue to work on the platform (and hopefully create some great new apps for all of the bargain bin TouchPads out there), Microsoft has opened their arms to these disenfranchised developers. Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development, tweeted an offer to published WebOS developers this past Friday: Microsoft will give them whatever they need to be successful, from free phones to development tools and training. A bold move by Watson, and one that seems to have paid off already: he received over 500 emails from interested devs in under 24 hours, and Watson was understandably “floored” by the response. This isn’t the first time Watson has gone out on a limb to endear himself to the developer crowd: in the past he shared his personal cell number on Twitter to field questions about the development process. Warm welcomes aside, former WebOS devs may struggle with the transition. Many WebOS apps were written in HTML and JavaScript, while getting the most mileage out of Windows Phone 7 requires familiarity with C# and the .NET framework. Microsoft’s commitment to making resources available to new WinPho devs may be just what they need to get accustomed to the waters. With a generous offer like this, Microsoft seems to realize that forging strong developer relations is critical to the success of their mobile platform. The Windows Marketplace’s app count is rapidly approaching 30,000, and Brandon’s welcoming stance on developer relations could help Redmond bolster their numbers even further. Microsoft’s mobile OS rivals have app counts in the hundreds of thousands, and while there’s certainly something to be said for quality over quantity, big app store numbers are a quick (if short-sighted) way to measure platform health. Picking up traction among former WebOS devs is only the tip of the iceberg for Microsoft’s mobile dev efforts. Their next big focus? Watson says working with students will be “huge” for Microsoft this year.
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| Sony Ericsson Reveals “Live With Walkman” Android Smartphone Posted: 22 Aug 2011 06:18 AM PDT  Sony Ericsson knows how to do Facebook. A social network can’t be the only selling point of the phone, like on the HTC Status — there has to be something else. For gamers, SE brought Facebook into the mix with the Xperia Play. Now, music fans are getting the same love. This morning, SE unveiled the Live With Walkman smartphone featuring a button for instant music access and deep Facebook integration. Though SE has only called it "deep Facebook integration," the capabilities of the software lead me to believe that this is nearly identical to the Facebook Inside Xperia platform, just without the Xperia bit. You can still connect direct to Facebook from within the photo gallery, music player, calendar and phonebook. Past that, there's a dedicated hardware button that connects the user to Sony's Qriocity music platform, offering instant access to music and videos. The only hangup is that this little guy doesn't quite have the specs to compete with the big boys: 3.2-inch TFT display, single-core 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel auto-focus camera that shoots in 720p, a front-facing camera, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. If you're all about having a bad mamma jamma phone, the new offering from SE probably won't cut it. Then again, if you primarily use your phone to listen to music and keep up with Facebook, the Live with Walkman may be just what you're looking for. Pricing is as-yet unannounced but we expect to see the Live with Walkman hit shelves in October. Company: SONY ERICSSON Website: http://www.sonyericsson.com/ Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications is a global provider of mobile multimedia devices, including feature-rich phones, accessories and PC cards. The products combine powerful technology with innovative applications for mobile...
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| Kno Turns Textbooks 3D (Video) Posted: 22 Aug 2011 06:04 AM PDT How do you make a digital textbook more than just a glorified PDF on a tablet? Kno, the tablet textbook company started by Chegg co-founder Osman Rashid, is rolling out a variety of features to try to bring textbooks to life, including Facebook integration, automated quizes, an activity stream of notes. But an update to its iPad app today points to how digital textbooks can create entirely new experiences out of static notations. In the vido above, Rashid shows me Kno’s 3D modeling feature. The 3D feature right now works only with models of molecules in chemistry textbooks. It converts the standard chemistry notations indicating how atoms are bonded together in a molecule into a spinning 3D model along the margins. These 3D models can be enlarged and rotated to give students a better visualization of how each one appears. Of all the new features Rashid showed me, this one impressed me the most because Kno is taking the original text and making it a richer experience on the iPad. You can’t do this on paper. And you can imagine 3D models appearing for other types of 2D content such as blueprints, engineering diagrams, or other types of illustrations. Kno is introducing a couple of other features today as well, video notes and smart links. Kno textbooks include a “journal,” which s a stream of your highlights, notes, audio notes, and photos. Now you can add video clips recorded directly from the iPad camera as well. The smart links also bring in more video into each textbook, but in context with what you are reading. These initially will be Khan Academy videos, but will include other educational videos online in the future. Below is a video of the QuizMe and Journal features, introduced earlier this month.
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