MobileCrunch

Nokia Is Looking To Sell Its Luxury Phone Subsidiary Vertu
Fly Or Die: Flipboard For The iPhone
Verizon Confirms Widespread 4G Outage, Still Scrambling For A Fix
Snow Fight iOS Game Makes It Feel Like Christmas Every Day
Surprise! Microsoft Launches Xbox Live App For iPhone And iPad
Xbox 360-controlling “Xbox Companion” App Now Available For Windows Phone 7
Motorola And Sony Ericsson Weigh In On The Android 4.0 Upgrade Process
Forecast: 1 Billion HTML5 Phones By 2013
With Growth Accelerating, Socialcam’s Mobile Video App Passes 3 Million Downloads
With v2.0, Flud Wants To Do For Social News Reading What Spotify Is Doing For Music
Verizon CEO: After Years Of Trying, Shared Data Plans Could Come In 2012
Now On The iPhone: Opuss, An Instagram For Words
At Le Web, Crowley Hints At Foursquare’s Future In Recommendations For Everything
Apple’s Hiring To Improve Siri, Possibly Readying API For Third Parties
Basis Triumphes Over RIM In Name Dispute, BBX Is Now BlackBerry 10
Developer Of ‘Social Keyboard’ Android App SwiftKey Raises $2.4 Million
DIY Android Phone Name Generator: Be Your Own Confused Marketing Department
Evernote Launches Two New iPhone Apps: ‘Food’ And ‘Hello’

Nokia Is Looking To Sell Its Luxury Phone Subsidiary Vertu

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 05:04 AM PST

As Nokia struggles to establish itself as a worthy competitor to Apple and the Android bulldozer in the smartphone segment, the company is looking to sell off its wholly-owned luxury phone brand Vertu, reports the Financial Times.

Vertu, which sells some of the world’s most expensive ugly phones, was originally started by Nokia back in 1998.

Perhaps surprisingly, its business of selling mobile phones – which are priced higher than your average house or Ferrari sports car – has actually proved to be a good one, with annual revenue estimated to be between $268 million and $402 million.

Vertu’s luxury handsets are available for purchase in more than 60 countries, some with dedicated shops. The phones come with a “concierge” button that lets owners easily to speed dial a team of personal assistants to make all sorts of arrangements and reservations.

Other associated services include Vertu City Brief, a series of independent, curated guides to 200 cities around the world, and Vertu.me, an exclusive email account that enables a user’s phone emails, calendar and contacts to be backed up to “ultra-secure Vertu servers”.

According to the FT, Nokia has appointed Goldman Sachs to oversee the sale of Vertu, which may potentially be interesting to luxury goods brands and private equity firms.

Fly Or Die: Flipboard For The iPhone

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 05:02 PM PST

Last night, Flipboard released its long-awaited iPhone app. The app is a companion to its popular iPad reader which renders feeds and realtime streams into a magazine-like experience. The iPhone app is already so popular that it took down Flipboard’s service earlier today.

In this episode of Fly or Die, John Biggs and I take the iPhone app through the paces. (You can watch our episode on the original iPad app here from last January). The iPhone app is gorgeous, as you would expect from Flipboard. Biggs thinks it’s more busy than beautiful. It’s certainly not the most efficient way to go through your information streams, but that is not the point.

It strips down the iPad app and presents it on the smaller screen. You flip vertically through your stories, headlines, and Tweets instead of horizontally and there is a promising new feature called Cover Stories that attempts to pull together the best stories from all your feeds.

Cover Stories, I confirmed after the taping, is based on the relevance-matching technology Flipboard acquired with Ellerdale in 2010. (Ellerdale’s founder, Arthur Van Hoff, is now Flipboard’s CTO). It is based on reader interactions with stories in Flipboard—these would include likes, retweets, and stories from sources you tend to read—and there may be some manual curation involved as well. This is one of the first steps Flipboard is taking to try to filter the stream.

If Flipboard’s iPhone-only Cover Stories can bring you the best stories, photos, videos, and tweets in your social streams, it will become as addictive as the iPad app. But if you don’t like big pictures adorning your tweets, like John and maybe two other people, maybe this app isn’t for you.

Verizon Confirms Widespread 4G Outage, Still Scrambling For A Fix

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 03:22 PM PST

Just in time to throw a wrench into people’s wireless shopping plans, Verizon has announced that their much-vaunted 4G LTE network is experiencing a few hiccups. And by hiccups, I mean that their 4G network is currently undergoing a widespread outage that’s affecting customers across the country.

According to a recent release, “Verizon Wireless engineers have been working to resolve an issue with 4G LTE service that is affecting some customers' 4G devices,” and that “3G data and voice devices are unaffected.” However, that doesn’t exactly seem to be the case for everyone affected: reports are floating around on blogs and Verizon’s customer forums that some people are without so much as a 3G or 1X connection. Stranger still, some customers are completely fine with everything working as it should.

Verizon’s 4G flakiness seemed to begin last night when some 4G devices (like the Droid RAZR in particular) began to exhibit SIM card authorization errors. Those issues apparently continue to plague Verizon certain customers today, and one of my retail sources tells me that some new Verizon 4G devices can’t be activated because of the network outage, which is the last thing Verizon needs going into holiday crunch time.

At present, Verizon has no comment on when to expect service to be restored, but we’ll keep you posted as the situation develops.

Snow Fight iOS Game Makes It Feel Like Christmas Every Day

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 12:49 PM PST

This morning I was feeling particularly dreary. The weather is gloomy today in the Big Apple, grey and rainy, and it’s chillier than it was yesterday. I found a little comfort in the fact that the holidays are on their way, but looking out the window it simply doesn’t feel like Christmastime.

Disheartened, I opened up my trusty MacBook Pro and started in on my least favorite part of the hump day, checking email. But something special was waiting for me in my inbox this morning, something that makes me feel like the 12 Days of Christmas are already underway: an iPhone game called Snow Fight.

Snow Fight isn’t flashy or anything like that. It’s actually a rather simple game of capture the flag, with a snow-ball fight thrown into the mix. You basically control a little man, or little men if you’ve advanced to later stages of the game, whose only mission in life is to capture the opposing team’s snowmen and flags.

It isn’t super fast-paced, but it takes way more strategy than I expected. If you can’t figure a way to pelt the other team to death with snowballs before they do it to you, well, you lose. And no one likes a loser. Especially in snow ball fights.

But you don’t just win for winning’s sake, either. You have to be the ultimate snow-ball warrior to get the gold-star, chocolate-chip-cookie, best-snow-thrower-ever award. Actually, I think they just call it a Gold badge, but you get what I’m saying.

If all your players make it out alive, if you never get hit, or if you collect all the snowmen instead of just the flag, you get a better score. There are also bonuses to be found across the game map like replenish life, instant reload, and snowball increase (because you can only hold so many snowballs at once).

I’ve been playing Snow Fight all day, and must admit that it has done quite a bit to brighten my day. I only wish it was snowing instead of raining so I could partake in my own snow-slinging, flag-capturing shenanigans. I guess the virtual world will have to do for now though. At least I’m not virtually cleaning.

The app went live today in the App Store for free and is available on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. If interested, I’d suggest taking a look at that video below for some strategic game play ideas. It’s really not as easy as it looks.

Surprise! Microsoft Launches Xbox Live App For iPhone And iPad

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 12:41 PM PST

Whoa. Here’s something I didn’t think I’d be saying this morning: Microsoft is killin’ it this week.

In the past 48 hours, they’ve launched a massively overhauled interface for the Xbox 360, released a much improved Netflix 360 app, and debuted an app that lets you control your 360 from a Windows Phone 7 handset. And for their next move: they’ve just launched an Xbox Live application (fittingly dubbed “My Xbox Live”) for iOS.

Now, the app doesn’t seem to replicate the 360-controlling features of the WP7 app they launched this morning — that, understandably, seems to be a Windows Phone exclusive. It does, however, duplicate many of the Live-centric features that Windows Phone had at launch.

You can:

Change your 3D avatar’s appearance
Message your Xbox Live friends
View your achievements
Peruse Xbox news

While I’m sure more than a few Xbox-obsessed Windows Phone 7 handset owners will be a bit chaffed to lose mobile exclusivity on these features, the jump to iOS was pretty much inevitable. My favorite bit of the whole thing: the not-so-subtle nod to Windows Phone 7′s user interface down on the bottom bar of the iPhone app.

The app is universal, and thus custom tailored for both the iPhone and the iPad (and it’s really, really damn pretty on the iPad. Solid job, Microsoft.) You can find it in the App Store right here.

Xbox 360-controlling “Xbox Companion” App Now Available For Windows Phone 7

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 11:08 AM PST

Microsoft’s wonderfully shiny new Xbox 360 dashboard is now available to most, and, while it’s a bit of a letdown in some ways (more on that later, probably), it has plenty of very, very cool new features. Cloud storage for game saves! New Netflix! HBOGO (Eventually!)

One of the niftier features, however, is being saved solely for those rockin’ Windows Phone 7 phones. Called Xbox Companion, it allows you some degree of control over your 360 from your handset (as opposed to a standard controller), and it just went live.

Now, don’t go throwing out your dedicated controller just yet, (Master) Chief. While the Xbox Companion lets you fire up and control media and set beacons (alerting you when friends are playing certain games, so you can drop everything and get some headshots), it’s by no means a replacement for your actual controller. It is, at least in its current state, mostly a rather neat trick and an occasional excuse to not get up and grab the controller.

Still: if you’ve got a Windows Phone handset, a 360, and a Live account, give it a spin.

Motorola And Sony Ericsson Weigh In On The Android 4.0 Upgrade Process

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 11:00 AM PST

The era of Ice Cream Sandwich is upon us, and while some of us are waiting diligently for our Galaxy Nexuses to to arrive, others are left pondering a more different question: when will my device get Android 4.0?

Sony Ericsson (soon to be just Sony) and Motorola have heard our pleas, and have both gone into lengthy tirades about how the Ice Cream Sandwich process actually works and how long it takes, albeit without juicy details like dates.

Though they both go about it in different ways — Sony Ericsson’s explanation delves into more technical territory, while Motorola’s is more accessible — they essentially outline the same multi-step process. I’d recommend Android junkies take a look at both just for the nitty gritty details, but here’s the TL;DR version of how the upgrade process works.

Get it working: It wasn’t long ago that Google released the AOSP version of Ice Cream Sandwich, and at that point vendors began to work on getting it running on the devices that they have decided will get the upgrade. For Motorola, this means the Droid RAZR, the Droid Bionic, the original XOOMs, and the new XYBOARDs. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson will be updating their entire 2011 Xperia line. At this point, they’ll also be working on integrating manufacturer-specific tweaks, and making sure all the basics (phone calls, SMS, data connections) work properly.

Squash the bugs: Now that ICS is up-and-running, it’s up to the vendors to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible. This includes (mong other things) applying patches and fixes, making sure downloaded apps run properly, and the extensive testing different use-cases for stability.

Submit for certification: Once all the heavy lifting is done, it’s off to the network operators for certification. This is probably the most time-consuming of all the steps since they have to extensively test the update, and the process can differ from carrier to carrier. It can take longer still for companies who launch the same devices in multiple countries. The updates also have to be certified to show that they are compliant with a given regulatory body’s technical standards (like Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.).

Push it out: The best part (at least from my point of view). With everyone having signed off on the update, it gets released for end-users to download.

Though very informative, Eurodroid points out that their explanations also seem to serve as something of a mea culpa — getting all these devices to run Android 4.0 takes a lot of work, so sorry for the (inevitable) wait.

Forecast: 1 Billion HTML5 Phones By 2013

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 10:27 AM PST

There will be one billion HTML5-capable phones sold in 2013, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. The number represents a (huge, huge) increase from the 336 million units sold in 2011. As expected, much of the growth will be driven by sales in North America, Europe and Asia, as well as support from vendors like Apple, Adobe, Google and Microsoft.

For clarification purposes, the firm defines an HTML5 phone as one that’s capable of full HTML5 support within its web browser, such as the iPhone 4S.

It’s HTML5′s cross-platform nature that makes the technology impossible for mobile stakeholders to ignore, explains Strategy’s Executive Director Neil Mawston, citing HTML5′s ability to help multiple platforms converge, including smartphones, feature phones, tablets, notebooks, desktop PCs, TVs and even vehicles. However, Strategy’s Thomas Kang added that the technology is still relatively immature, with limited API’s and feature-sets when compared with what’s possible today in native apps, like those built for Android or iOS.

Strategy isn’t the only firm predicting an influx of HTML5 mobile devices. Earlier this summer, ABI Research said that there would be more than 2.1 billion mobile devices with HTML5 browsers by 2016. That’s up from 109 million in 2010.

Although the HTML5 standard itself won’t be officially complete until 2014, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), ABI predicts that some 25 HTML5 features now in development will become widely used over the next few years. These include feature categories like graphics, data storage, multimedia and user interactions.

One HTML5 feature is already making serious headway on mobile is HTML5 video. If you’ll recall, the rapid adoption of the web standard is precisely the reason why Adobe announced last month that it would be discontinuing its development of Flash for Mobile. Flash adoption on mobile lagged, and frankly, was drawing focus from Adobe’s other efforts in the HTML5 arena.

Whether it’s a billion phones by 2013, or a couple billion devices by 2016 (depending on your source), it’s clear that HTML5 adoption is only beginning to have an impact on today’s web. And today’s web, for many, is now the mobile web, thanks to smartphone adoption trends in key markets like North America and Europe in particular. But until HTML5 trickles down to all those feature phones, the majority of the world’s mobile users will be left behind.

Correction: HTML5 is on track for 2014, not 2020.

With Growth Accelerating, Socialcam’s Mobile Video App Passes 3 Million Downloads

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 10:00 AM PST

We’ve been tracking Socialcam‘s foray into mobile video sharing since the app launched in March, so we have some context for the announcement today that it’s passed 3 million downloads. Basically, the app is starting to take off.

It took until July to reach 1 million downloads, so around five months. Then it hit 2 million downloads near the beginning of October, or around three months. It’s taken just two months to reach the 3 million mark that it’s announcing today. Based on what chief executive Michael Seibel tells me about its latest usage patterns, I’ll go ahead and guess that it’ll take less than two months to hit 4 million downloads.

The app is coming off its biggest download weekend to date, “primed” by a big download weekend over Thanksgiving, he says. It had introduced a feature to let users share videos privately a couple weeks ago, which hit the holiday right — the two biggest use cases it’s seeing are special events and families. 25% of all videos are now private, with both long-time and new users taking advantage of the feature on top of the social focus.

The big results this past weekend, though, were more about doing what many of us did, which was go back to our normal lives and hang out with friends.

The company’s been getting more and more pick-up for its Instagram style “filters,” too, which is also likely driving more usage and downloads. After adding filters in October, the company said 45% of users’ videos had them. Seibel tells me that 72% of videos taken have them now.

More subtly, the company is also getting enough users that it’s able to show people more relevant content from friends when they first join. The median number of videos seen by new users has been steadily climbing, and is now at 7. It figures out who your friends are and what to show you by letting you sync with Facebook, Twitter and your address book.

While the app is available for both iPhone (here) and Android (here), Seibel says that the vast majority of users are on the former device. The issue is what many mobile developers face — it’s hard to support all the Android versions and devices out there.

The company hasn’t turned on any revenue model yet. One option is freemium, with paying users getting extra features. But Seibel’s more interested in eventually getting into advertising, mixing in relevant video content with what its users are creating in a non-invasive way. But all that’s further out. Growth is the focus for now, and based on the data available, expect more of it soon.

The Justin.tv spinout is going head-to-head with other serious startups like Klip, and seems to be taking an early lead as this space evolves.

With v2.0, Flud Wants To Do For Social News Reading What Spotify Is Doing For Music

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 09:53 AM PST

You may be familiar with Flud as the news reader app that’s trying to build an appealing alternative to Flipboard and Pulse. Flud launched iOS platform back at the end of 2010 with a heavy focus on design — and a simple user interface. Fast Company even gave Flud the 2010 Design Award of The Year. The startup has since launched its social news sharing app on Android, raised $1 million in seed from Ludlow Ventures, Scott Belsky, and Detroit Venture Partners, and is re-tooling its app for Mango, as Jordan reported last month, for release in January.

It’s been off to a great start, but to really offer a service that competes with the big boys, Flud is on a mission to build a personalized news-sharing ecosystem. Today, the startup is adding some important functionality into its app in an effort to do just that, as Flud 2.0 now allows users to create and broadcast their own news personalities. So, in addition to being a social tool for users to discover news content and select the news and information they want to follow, users can now share inside Flud to an audience based around topics or interests, creating news personalities by curating content they find from their go-to daily news sources — and receiving their own personalized Flud URL (www.flud.it/rip-empson), for example.

How often do you see a headline but don’t have time to read the article and want to save it for later? Flud 2.0 offers controls for sorting and organizing news sources, allowing users to read news quickly, gather headlines into “Reading Lists”, to read later at their leisure. The Reading List button allows users to quickly bookmark articles when scanning headlines, which pop up on their profiles and can be checked out by their followers in users’ activity feeds. Pretty cool.

Flud has also added a “Share” button so that readers can push content to social networks, in conjunction with the ability to create news networks — or communities — around particular areas of interest.

Through these new social capabilities, Flud users can create profiles, which become their personal front pages, compiling news that matters — essentially becoming a diary of what users are reading that can be viewed (and interacted with) by other readers.

Flud has also added support for Tumblr, allowing users to push content to their blogs for furhter discussion, adding support to Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, and Instapaper, as well as syncing across devices so that their personal news diaries can follow them across devices, tablets, and desktops.

These new iterations are an important move for Flud in moving from an app model to a platform model, as it’s one thing to build a suped up news RSS aggregator, but another to give users a dynamic platform through which they can interact, share, and converse with a community of news readers — and the content itself. With information overload and a colossal amount of content and news circulating on the Web, most readers browse through headlines looking for content they want to share.

The ability for Fluders to create reading lists, use the Flud equivalent of “liking” headlines and stories which then show up in their activity feeds and can be viewed by those following their profiles, makes Flud into a news equivalent of Facebook or Twitter. Your news profile shows how many stories you’ve read, which stories you’ve “liked”, what content is in your reading list, and what readers and news sources you’re following.

It’s a great way to discover news from sources you trust, as well as give others the credit for influencing what articles you’re reading. If I read a story that you’ve Fluded, my profile will show that you were the source that allowed me to discover the article. Many of use Twitter to discover news items that people are sharing and reading in realtime, but Twitter is filled with noise and that discovery has to be serendipitous.

Flud takes the better parts of Twitter’s news discovery and gives them their own news-dedicated community, with some great added social benefits. The more you read, and the more you influence others, the higher you rise as an influencer — something you can bet Flud will continue to focus on in the future.

These capabilities add a new level of discovery and curation to Flud’s service, one that should be appealing to its users and help push the service along in its mission to go beyond RSS to achieve that ecosystem feel that readers want and are coming to expect.

For more on Flud 2.0, you can find the app here or at home here.

Verizon CEO: After Years Of Trying, Shared Data Plans Could Come In 2012

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 09:40 AM PST

Families and businesses can share a bucket of minutes, so why can’t they share a bucket of data? Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam appeared at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference today, and revealed that customers may be able to do just that in the near future.

From Verizon’s end, the shift toward a shared data plan could potentially simplify their data tracking and billing process for family and business plans: instead of having to track each individual user’s data usage against their own monthly allotment and generate a bill, Verizon would be able to track each customer’s usage against a single data bucket. If priced right, rolling out a shared data plan could be what finally gets people to migrate off of their grandfathered unlimited data plans, too.

Let’s not forget that consumers would also love this. Instead of shelling out a minimum of $30/month for each member of the family who wants a shiny new smartphone, family heads would presumably be able to purchase a single bucket of data for everyone to draw from. A shared data plan could also help save families some of their hard-earned money: instead forcing everyone to go for a 2GB plan that may be overkill, smartly-sized data buckets could mean that families could pay for a single data plan that better fits their use case.

In short, it has the potential to be something rare in the wireless space: a win-win situation.

It’s a great idea, and one that consumers (at least the ones I’ve spoken to) have wanted to see for a long time. What CEO McAdam left up in the air is how exactly a shared data plan would work for Verizon customers. It could be as simple as paying a set price for a shared bucket of data (think $70 for 6GB), with each member of the plan being able from access that bucket as needed. That approach would make sense given the company’s work in pushing account-level pricing: the data plan wouldn’t necessarily be tied to a given line, but to the account itself, allowing access for everyone associated with it.

Though McAdam notes that the push toward account level pricing has been a consistent one, families and businesses looking to streamline their bills have a little longer to wait.

“I think in 2012 we will see it,” he said. “We have been working on this for a couple of years. Getting to one bill and getting to account-level pricing is our goal.”

Now On The iPhone: Opuss, An Instagram For Words

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 08:55 AM PST

Attention, hipsters: you can now take your poetry slams mobile. (Do hipsters still like poetry slams? I don’t know). Anyway, there’s a new iPhone app called Opuss, which describes itself as an “Instagram for words.” But to be clear, it doesn’t have to be just for poetry. It can also be used to save and share beloved quotes, jokes, recipes, reviews, stories or anything else you feel the need to write…but not tweet.

Opuss is a darned pretty app, I have to admit, even though I’m not completely sold on the concept. CTO Adam Neilson says the app is meant to be sort of a grown up Twitter, but the first entry I saw upon opening the app was a bit more juvenile.

For your amusement, the poem was called “Glow Worm.”

Here’s how it goes:

I wish I were a glow worm
A glow worm’s never glum,
‘Cause how can you be grumpy,
when the sun shines out your bum?

(credit: loz)

OK. Um. Yeah.

That being said, it would be nice to read some higher-quality poetry in here (sorry, loz), because the app itself looks great. I can see how it would be fun to use.

After you download and install Opuss, the app briefly walks you through how to use its buttons and features. Usually, I find “walk-throughs” annoying and in the way (my philosophy: if your app needs an explainer, you need to start over), but for some reason I found myself actually reading the Opuss tutorial. You swipe through each screen as the button being described lights up at the bottom. There are even iPhone homescreen-esque dots at the bottom indicating your current page and position.

A decent tutorial seems like such a simple thing, but it’s not. I’ve seen some serious disasters involving what appear to be hand-drawn circles and handwritten notes describing an app’s elements. So cheers, Opuss, on that.

Using the app is pretty straightforward, too. You can view the feed, filter by category, follow others, comment, like and share.

I don’t get the app’s cat theme – paw prints, collars, and kitty icons fill Opuss. (Oh, puss?) Update: Oooh, opus. Opuss. OK. Heh. And I’m not sure of the stickiness factor of an app for following and favoriting people’s words in the age of Twitter. But this app looks good, which is all the more impressive given the company’s lack of funding.

Opuss is the product of Seamonster Ltd., a London-based outfit staffed by Adam Neilson, former Probability CTO, now Seamonster CTO (and Interim CEO), Technical Director and Co-founder Jeff Hodnett and Creative Director Chris Knight.

You can try it for yourself from here.

At Le Web, Crowley Hints At Foursquare’s Future In Recommendations For Everything

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 08:53 AM PST

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At Le Web Foursquare Co-Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley expanded on the future direction for the company and product, signalling how check-in data is becoming less important than the recommendations it is capable of producing for users.

Interviewed on stage by blogger Robert Scoble, Crowley went in to the Explore feature of the product and how the sheer number of check-ins are adding to the recommendations Explore can give and feeding back into the other new feature, Radar. It’s this ability for to “technology to generate serendipity” that is at the core of what Foursquare is about he said.

Apple’s Hiring To Improve Siri, Possibly Readying API For Third Parties

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 07:19 AM PST

While Siri is no doubt one of the coolest features I’ve ever seen on a phone, we’re all still dealing with some form of disenchantment. Siri blows your mind that first day, and then it feels like you spend the rest of your time chasing that magic, repeating things so she’ll understand, waiting for her to get over “trouble connecting to the network,” etc. Luckily though, Apple is on the hunt for a few stellar iOS engineers to not only make Siri more beautiful, but also to perhaps get her ready for third party integration.

Siri UI boss Dan Keen last night tweeted “Want to help make Siri even better? I’m hiring ,” with links to two job postings. Both call for Siri UI software engineers, reports 9to5Mac. In both posts there is specific mention of a Siri API.

iOS Software Engineer:

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the content that appears within the conversational view. This is a broad-ranging task – we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application’s UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

Each of these little “snippets” corresponds to an individual application, so you will have extensive cross-functional work with many other teams. You’ll need to work with them to enable access to their data and behaviors, and wire them up to your implementations. As a result, strong API design is needed to keep communications ideal.

Apple then gets even more poignant with its API needs.

Senior iOS Software Engineer:

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the conversation view and its many different actions. This includes defining a system that enables a dialog to appear intuitive, a task that involves many subtle UI behaviors in a dynamic, complex system. You will have several clients of your code, so the ability to formulate and support a clear API is needed.

There’s no question that one day the Siri API will be available to third-party developers. The demand for it is clear, as we’re already seeing hackers do some pretty awesome things with Siri unofficially. But Apple switched up its strategy with this feature, releasing it as a somewhat unpolished beta. That said, it’ll take time and apparently two more software engineers to get our artificially intelligent friend ready for developers.

Basis Triumphes Over RIM In Name Dispute, BBX Is Now BlackBerry 10

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 06:50 AM PST

Just days after RIM unveiled the BBX platform at BlackBerry DevCon, they were served legal papers from a New Mexico-based software development company named Basis over the BBX name. News on that front has been quiet recently, but last night the U.S. Federal Court in Albuquerque forced RIM to raise their white flag and change their new OS’s name in time for DevCon Asia.

Their new choice? BlackBerry 10. Thrilling.

Follow @BlackBerryDev@BlackBerryDev
Research In Motion

#BBDevCon Asia Keynote: BlackBerry 10 is the official name of the next generation platform that will power future BlackBerry smartphones!^BZ

December 6, 2011 7:28 pm via CoTweetReply RetweetFavorite

RIM, I hope you know that I’d love to stop harping on you so much, but things like this whole BBX debacle just make it irresistable. ~~BBX~~ BlackBerry 10 is a make-it-or-break-it situation, and for what it’s worth, I’d like to see RIM stick around for a long time to come. Losing a competitive force in the marketplace usually means fewer choices for consumers and that’s never a good thing. But still, you really couldn’t have looked into this a bit further first? I mean, I get the fact that you and Basis operate in different markets (hence the Reuters quote expressing confidence), but really guys — it would’ve killed you to hedge your bets a little?

Alright, fine: in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter what name RIM chooses for their next-gen operating system. If BlackBerry 10 can’t pose a competitive threat to Android, iOS, or Windows Phone, it could be called “RIM Will Pay You To Buy This Phone OS” and it wouldn’t make a difference.

But seriously RIM, after everything you’ve been through lately, you’ve got to fight to win back the confidence of your current (and future) customers. Getting tied up in a legal kerfuffle over something as basic as your operating system’s name isn’t the way to go, but there’s still time to learn from your mistakes. Stay out of the spotlight for the next few months, and make BlackBerry 10 as amazing as possible.

Developer Of ‘Social Keyboard’ Android App SwiftKey Raises $2.4 Million

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 06:43 AM PST

TouchType, the London-based company behind the popular SwiftKey Android applications, has raise $2.4 million (£1.5 million) in Series A funding in a round led by Octopus Investments.

SwiftKey is a keyboard app that leverages TouchType’s natural language engine technology (dubbed Fluency) to learn a user's writing style and try to accurately correct and even predict their text input. The idea is for the app to reduce the number of keystrokes and speed up text entry on smartphones and tablet computers.

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