MobileCrunch |  |
- Microsoft: “Microsoft Has Had [Voice Control] In Windows Phones For A Year”
- The Kindle Fire, What Is It Good For?
- They’re Rioting Over BlackBerrys In Indonesia (And Other Black Friday Insanity That’ll Make You Fear For The Future)
- Why Quad-Core?
- In Look’s iOS Geo-Tagging App, You Can Put A Bird (Or Pepper Spray Cop) On Something And Just Call It Art
- TechCrunch Cribs: Iovox Is Rocking The Voice World, Literally [TCTV]
- AT&T To Press: We Withdrew Our Merger Application First
- Verizon Teases The Internet With $199 Galaxy Nexus
| Microsoft: “Microsoft Has Had [Voice Control] In Windows Phones For A Year” Posted: 25 Nov 2011 04:26 PM PST In a charming interview with Forbes Magazine, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie discussed future products at Microsot, including the success and plans for the Kinect as well as their mesa para computación, the Surface. Most important to certain folks who like computers by Apple were his comments on Siri. Basically, he said Windows Phone has had voice control – namely simple commands like “text Mom” and Bing searches – for a year now. Duh! He said:
Now does that say that Microsoft can’t market product? Sure. Does it also say that people don’t care about Windows Phone? Why not. Does it say that Microsoft has a huge gap to close? Absolutely. Will they close it? Eventually, but it won’t be easy.
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| The Kindle Fire, What Is It Good For? Posted: 25 Nov 2011 12:52 PM PST  When the Kindle Fire first shipped a couple weeks ago, the reviews were mixed. Uncle Walt calls it good, but not great. David Pogue at the NYT thinks it is “sluggish,” lacking “polish or speed.” But the Kindle Fire is still selling like hotcakes. Some reviewers are disappointed that it is not an iPad, but that is the wrong way to look at it. The Fire is a standout media tablet that does a few things very well and I am going to tell you what they are. I’ve been using a Kindle Fire for the past two weeks (that is, when my kids or wife haven’t absconded to another room with it). The device passes my first test: my family fights over it. The Fire is kid-tested, and mother-approved. Fruit Ninja is the new obsession with my young children. Even my two-year-old, who loves the iPad, is increasingly eyeing the Kindle Fire and scheming ways to get her Mom out of the room so she can play with it. My wife will have none of that, she’s reading Joan Didion’s latest book on the Fire. I sneak it away from the bedside table when everyone is asleep at night to watch old episodes of Arrested Development. The Kindle Fire is purpose-built to find and consume digital media: books, movies and TV shows, music, magazines, apps, and the web. It is more limited in its capabilities than an iPad, but in these areas it holds its own. Let me address each of these areas individually: Reading A better comparison than the iPad is to other Kindles. I’ve been playing with a Kindle Touch as well, and the responsiveness of the screen is so temperamental that it is frustrating for me to use. The flicker of the E Ink screen also gives me a headache. No, if you are going to buy a Kindle buy the Kindle Fire. It is much better, even for reading digital books and magazines. The New Yorker magazine looks great on it. Yes, I know backlit screens are not as good for your eyes as E Ink, but who are we kidding? Many of us are staring at screens for 8 to 12 hours a day. I, for one, am used to it and find backlit screens more readable than E Ink. It also is much easier to highlight passages or look something up on the web straight from the text. The Kindle Fire also blows away the iPad as a digital book reader (as you would hope it would, coming from Amazon). Mostly, that is because of its smaller form factor. It is about the size of a large paperback. You can hold it in one hand and flick through the pages with your thumb. It is a much more pleasurable reading experience than the larger iPad, which is a little unwieldy by comparison for extended reading periods. Although, the Kindle app on the iPad is otherwise perfectly fine. Watching Despite its smaller screen size, the Fire is an excellent video viewing device. It ties in directly to Amazon’s Instant Video store, where you can either buy or rent video downloads. The selection is pretty decent, with a mix of old and more recent movies and TV shows. You can either stream the movies directly or download them for later viewing. I’ve had no issues with streaming. The pictures are sharp and I’ve watched entire episodes without any hiccups over a strong WiFi connection. You can also watch movies through Netflix or Hulu Plus, which both have apps available on the Fire. But if you are an Amazon Prime member (all-you-can-eat shipping for $79 a year), you get Instant Video thrown in. That’s a good deal, considering that the Netflix streaming-only plan costs $96 a year, and you don’t get free shipping of any Christmas gifts with that. The one drawback of watching video on the Fire is that it is a solitary experience. The small screen size does not detract from the viewing experience when you are holding it in your lap and watching alone, but it’s not great for watching a show or movie with someone else. It is the video equivalent of reading over someone’s shoulder. And there is no easy way that I can tell of projecting the video on a bigger screen like you can with Airplay on the iPad. Listening Quite frankly, I barely notice the music store on the Kindle Fire. There is nothing wrong with the selection, and I applaud the way it distributes MP3 tunes that are compatible with any player. But when it comes to digital music that I purchase, I am just too locked into iTunes (or streaming music services) to want to bother with the Amazon Music Store. It is too much of a hassle to figure out how to get the music into iTunes, where I can listen to it on my iPhone or through my stereo. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to walk around listening to an album on the Fire with my headphones plugged in. It’s not like you can go on a run with it. And listening through the Fire’s external speakers, while perfectly fine for a movie, is not the ideal listening experience. The one use-case where music does make sense is if you want to listen to something while you are reading or browsing the web on the Fire. Browsing The Fire’s Silk browser is supposed to accelerate browsing on the device by pre-caching pages in the cloud and delivering them more intelligently. The browser is fast and functional, but from what I can tell it is no faster than the browser on an iPad. I tested about half a dozen web pages. If there is a difference in page-loading speeds, it is not noticeable. In the Web browsing department, the iPad bigger screen size gives it the advantage. You are not squinting as much as you do on a mobile phone’s browser, but you squint nonetheless. I find myself pinching and zooming a lot to read webpages. The tabbed browsing on the Fire, however, is a plus. Playing Finally, there are the apps. The Fire only ships with a few thousand apps available for download, compared to more than 200,000 for the iPad. But Amazon has done an excellent job to make sure that many of these first apps are excellent. Games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, while not unique to the Fire, are addictive and show off its graphics capabilities. Media apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora expand its entertainment capabilities. Some “apps” like Facebook and Twitter merely redirect to their HTML5 mobile websites through the browser, but I suspect they will get full-fledged apps in time. More importantly, the store, is much better organized and easier to browse than the official Android Market. If the Kindle Fire becomes the most popular Android tablet, as I suspect it will, then it could also become the biggest distributor of Android apps. Amazon’s app store finally brings a shopping and discovery experience to Android in much the same way that iTunes did for iOS apps. The best apps are still on the iPad and will continue to appear there first, but you are not giving up apps by going with a Kindle Fire. And they are just going to keep getting better the more people flock to the Fire, a device where buying media, including apps, is encouraged. People are not going to buy the Kindle Fire because of any of its specs. They are going to buy it because it eases them into the still-strange realm of digital books, movies, magazines, and apps. These are all media. The Fire makes it easy to find them and, more importantly, easy to pay for them. You hardly think twice about it. The ability to pack all your media into one little 7-inch device is still an incredible thing. But it is not just your media that makes it compelling. It is the access to Amazon’s vast and growing digital library of millions of books, movies, apps, and songs, all at your fingertips and one click away from your consuming eyes. If you do end up buying a Kindle Fire, I guarantee that you will end up spending a lot more than the subsidized $200 price of the device on media. And once you start buying digital media for the Fire, you won’t be going anywhere. Amazon will have you as a customer for life, if it doesn’t already. Watch the Fly or Die I did with John Biggs below for a look at the Kindle Fire in action.
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| Posted: 25 Nov 2011 10:26 AM PST  Black Friday often makes people act absolutely crazy. This is well-documented. Still, you don’t expect to see consumer-driven insanity go down in countries that don’t celebrate Turkey day and its accompanying shopfest. And that’s not where the surprises ended this morning in Indonesia. A crowd of 3,000 people waited in line today in Jakarta, Indonesia for a new smartphone. In fact, the group got so out of control that riot police had to be brought in to calm the masses. They weren’t waiting on the new iPhone 4S. Nope, not a random early Indonesian release of the Galaxy Nexus (which would be a surprise in itself), either. These people were waiting on none other than the BlackBerry Bold 9790, RIM’s latest attempt at being competitive in the smartphone arena. Actually, since RIM’s been sucking some fierce wind over here in the States we often forget that BlackBerrys are still one of the most popular brands in other countries. In any case, RIM may have bitten off more than it could chew this morning promising a 50 percent discount on the handset for the first 1,000 buyers. Turns out, about 3,000 people wanted to be one of those lucky thousand, and when the announcement came that the phone had sold out… Well, things got ugly. According to the Press Association, the masses were “rattling the gates” and later “went crazy” after hearing they would not only miss out on the discount, but the phone entirely. Here in the said-to-be civilized U.S. of A., things got even more ridiculous. Perhaps taking a cue from the police forces dealing with OccupyWallStreet (or casually pepper spraying cop), a woman in a Walmart took Black Friday shopping to an entirely different level last night in Los Angeles. At 10:20pm, the massive line was let inside the store at which point madness ensued. “People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” Alejandra Seminario told the Daily News. Yep, pepper spray. Some lady, who we shall henceforth refer to as “casually pepper spraying consumer,” whipped out a pepper spray can and let it rip to keep other (probably crazy) consumers away from the half-off electronics she’d been eyeing. Seriously. I really don’t even know what to say other than I’m scared, and I’m not having children.
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| Posted: 25 Nov 2011 09:52 AM PST  We are entering into a new era, ladies and gentlemen. Well, “era” may not be the right word considering how quickly things change in these here mobile parts, but the fact remains the same: Quad-core mobile processors are here. And the ones that aren’t quite here yet are coming. While many of our brilliantly geeky readers need no tutorial on the advantages of four processing cores, some of you may be thinking “Uh… OK, why do I care?” So I took it upon myself to place a few calls and get some of the big guns — Qualcomm, Nvidia, and TI — to explain why exactly you should care (or shouldn’t), and what kind of differences technology like this can make in the average user’s daily phone usage. Right off the bat, there are a few myths we need to squash, the most prominent being the misguided belief that doubling cores automatically doubles processing performance. That’s not so true. Upgrading from a single-core CPU to a dual-core processor yields 50 percent better performance, while upgrading from dual-core to quad-core increases performance by just 25 percent. The second commonly held but utterly untrue belief is that all mobile processors are created equally. These companies actually work extra hard to differentiate themselves, which is difficult when the end-user has little say over which processors get stuck in which devices. Generally speaking (as in, with no particular brand or model in mind), a quad-core CPU should most noticeably do two things. The first is to improve performance during multi-tasking or use of multi-threaded applications. Web browsing, for example, is a multi-threaded process, as are many advanced gaming applications. Android is also natively multi-threaded. The second noticeable improvement quad-core should yield is an increase in battery life. Now, your average CPU usually only consumes about 15 percent of your battery life during regularly daily usage, so the improvements won’t usually be that staggering. Still, battery life is a big problem right now in mobile and any improvement is a worthwhile one. Nvidia has been the first to bring quad-core processing to mobile, in the form of its Tegra 3 Kal-El SoC. Aside from the general benefits afforded by four cores, Nvidia specifically differentiates itself with what it calls a Companion core. The Companion core is a patented fifth core that maxes out at speeds of 500MHz. It uses patented technology known as variable symmetry multiprocessing (vSMP), which allows the processor to power cores on and off based on the device’s workload. The Companion core handles just about everything during low performance tasks and in stand-by mode, like email and monitoring the network for incoming calls. When you start on something more performance-intensive, like web browsing, facial recognition or photo stitching, other cores are powered on to handle the task. This is Nvidia’s way of improving performance while saving battery life, while others have found different ways to make quad-core stand out. Qualcomm, for example, is about to release its APQ8064 SoC, which has a special trick. Most multicore processors clock up and down at the same time. Qualcomm’s processor, on the other hand, is able to clock one core at the max while clocking the second needed core only to the speed it needs to complete the task. In other words, since Qualcomm’s processor cores can be clocked individually, a task that overflows on the first core may only need the second core spinning at 60 percent of its max speed. So just like Nvidia’s Companion core hooks you up on the battery life front, so will Qualcomm’s individual clocking technology. Texas Instruments, however, has yet to outline plans for their quad-core offerings and seems to be sticking with dual-core OMAP SoCs for the time being. That said, TI maintains that its OMAP 5 SoC equipped with a dual-core Cortex A15 processor (and two Cortex M4 cores) is a mature system that is more efficient at handling instructions. Some even refer to it as a quad-core system, though TI itself still calls this a dual-core SoC. And they believe it’ll compete. The company went so far as to say that its smart multi-core architecture actually takes 30 percent more instructions than the Cortex-A9 MPCore’s four processing cores as seen in Nvidia's Tegra 3. The truth is this is just the beginning when it comes to the migration toward four cores, and there’ll be plenty more to learn in the coming months.
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| Posted: 25 Nov 2011 09:45 AM PST  Banksy fans, this one’s for you. Imagine an iOS photo app that swaps out Instagram filters for stencils from your favorite meme or art piece, then add a little augmented reality, and you'll get Look. Built by a couple of the developers behind Sports+ as a side project earlier this month, it's the latest mobile app to use simple photo-editing and social features to make the world around you more interesting. After downloading Look for the first time, you log in with Facebook, then see a camera view with the "Look" stencil overlayed on it. You can then switch to new stencils, available in the first folder at the bottom of the screen, that include the Pepper Spraying Cop, Charlie Sheen's "Winning!" and a moustache for enhancing photos of your friends. If you want to unlock more stencils (at the price of $0.99 a pop), you can choose from sets of categories like birds based on Portlandia's "put a bird on it" sketch, various wildlife, movie stars, vehicles, etc…. Or you can make your own: take a photo in its stencil creation view, touch it up, then set it as your stencil and shoot away. Once you take a photo, you can adjust the color of the stencil and decide if you want to share it on Facebook or with friends or nearby users on the service. Shared photos appear in a reverse-chronological stream like in Instagram, and include location and time information, as well as the option to vote up the ones you like most. Although Look has begun as a fun side project to leverage existing code, it could have a lot of features in store: a gallery for the images that get the top votes, other sign-on and sharing services besides Facebook, and ways to share and sell your stencils to other users. They’re also planning an augmented reality view, moving beyond the current photo stream to show you other user’s stencils as you walk around. The stencil marketplace, combined with augmented reality, could be an especially powerful way for people to discover great new photos and make some money. And yes, Android users, a version is coming for you, too. Here are a few images from when I got carried away testing it: Don’t Think Different. Black Helicopter Spotted Over DC. Hi Honey, I Painted A Stencil Of Me Taking A Phone Photo Of Myself For You. Do You Like It?
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| TechCrunch Cribs: Iovox Is Rocking The Voice World, Literally [TCTV] Posted: 25 Nov 2011 09:43 AM PST  Iovox is a startup specialising in something known as VaaS (Voice as a Service). Their telephony platform allows companies to build services on the telephone network that do real-world, heavy-lifting style jobs which normally require call centres. Companies which have taken on the service include News International and many others. I went over to their West London offices (yes, not all startups in London are in the East, incredibly), to check out the legendary guitar playing skills of CEO Ryan Gallagher in our TechCrunch Europe version of TC Cribs. Maybe next time we should do a duet.
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| AT&T To Press: We Withdrew Our Merger Application First Posted: 25 Nov 2011 09:43 AM PST  This morning, AT&T issued a formal statement on the withdrawal of its application from the FCC regarding its merger with T-Mobile. The company had previously agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge in the case that its $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile failed to go through, $3 billion of which would go to Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and another $1 billion going to the book value of spectrum access. Yesterday, on Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., AT&T released a statement announcing its intention to withdraw its request from the FCC. Today’s statement is meant to clear up misconceptions around its withdrawal request, namely that the FCC must approve it. According to Wayne Watts, AT&T Senior Executive VP and General Counsel:
In its previous statement, AT&T said that it still intends to seek the necessary FCC approval, so today’s clarification on whether or not the FCC needs to approve this request seems to be a message directly to the media. The press had reported that when the FCC said it would begin further investigation of the merger application, AT&T pulled its request. Now, AT&T is making it clear that it withdrew its request before the FCC made the ruling that would have sent it over to an administrative law judge for review. It seems that AT&T doesn’t want to see its request reviewed by the administrative law judge, so it was better for them to pull the request, regroup and resubmit the request instead of getting this one denied.
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| Verizon Teases The Internet With $199 Galaxy Nexus Posted: 25 Nov 2011 06:47 AM PST  No, this isn’t a turkey-induced hallucination: ads for Verizon’s LTE-capable Galaxy Nexus have begun to pop up on a number of Android fan sites, and they clearly state that Samsung and Google’s latest joint effort will retail for $199. AndroidPolice notes that the ads are being run by a company called NetShelter, an ad network who coordinates these sorts of marketing efforts directly with carriers and manufacturers. The ad certainly looks legitimate, but it may not have been ready for prime time: clicking the Learn More button takes users to Verizon’s holiday landing page where the Galaxy Nexus is conspicuously absent. Also absent is any solid information on a release date: part of the ad’s URL hints at a November 29 launch, but a recently leaked Verizon document points to a December 8 release alongside the Droid 4. Nearly all of Verizon’s recent 4G-friendly heavyweights have hit store shelves at $299 (barring a few great promos), so seeing the Galaxy Nexus undercut the competition by $100 is a bit of a shock. That price tag could be part of a holiday promotion meant to drive units into people’s hands, but I certainly hope not. Discounting a long-awaited device after it launches is one thing, but potentially launching a device with a lower price tag only to raise it later may not sit well with people. Even so, my wallet just let out a sigh of relief. If that price tag holds true (and my fingers are crossed as I write this), then Apple’s line of iPhones may see some strong competition in the next few weeks.
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