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Nokia’s Ovi Store Serving Over 7 Million Downloads A Day

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 04:57 AM PDT

Nokia’s developer relations team would like you to remind you that Symbian has an App Store, called Ovi, and they’ve just surpassed 7.62 million downloads per day, thank you very much.

Their short announcement states that thanks to a recent change in the registration process – namely the removal of account requirements for the downloading of free apps – has sparked interest in the Ovi store. Most downloads are coming from India, making that country “the top country by downloads from the mobile web channel.”

These apps, designed for the Symbian phones Nokia is swiftly obsoleting, include titles like “Psycho Hunter” (“You play the game and we will tell your personality. It is simple game of deer hunt with good personality analysis tool for understanding your behavior and game play techniques. Test your friends for their psycho analysis.”) and something called Angry Birds which apparently involves pigs. Other hits include a few hundred flashlight apps and a Ukelele tuner.

While I am being a bit facetious, isn’t this a strange stat to crow on the eve of Microsoft and Nokia going all in to destroy the Symbian platform?

Kiss Me On The Bus: This App Crowdsources Bus Locations

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 02:51 AM PDT

A new app by Carnegie Mellon researchers Anthony Tomasic and John Zimmerman in conjunction with the University of Buffalo, allows bus riders to track their current location while riding the bus and, in turn, share this information with people who are still waiting, thereby creating a more complete map and schedule of bus routes and times. The app, Tiramisu, is free but, sadly, it only works in Pittsburgh right now.

The app requires that the rider activate the tracker in order to see when the next bus is due to arrive as well as its current “fullness” which can be registered by riders. When he or she boards, the app sends the bus’ location to the main server so other riders can tell where that particular bus is and when it will arrive. Obviously this requires the riders to actually care about their fellow humans, so the utility is therefore limited.

Presumably this same data can be used by the city or county transit authorities to improve travel times and inform riders of slow busses. It allows cash-strapped transit systems to add GPS functionality to their lines, even if it’s crowd-sourced.

"While better funded transit systems, such as those in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco, can afford to make GPS-based information available to riders in real-time, the Allegheny County system is under tremendous budget pressure," Steinfeld said. "Under such circumstances, a free, crowdsourced system such as Tiramisu offers an important alternative."

Google, IBM, and CMU’s Traffic21 initiative, among others, all sponsored the project.

So whether you’re a mother with your kids or a guy with his date, this app could, potentially prevent you from getting mad and/or late.

DeNA And ngmoco Launch Mobile Social Gaming Platform Mobage Worldwide

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 07:26 PM PDT

Is the world ready for the mobile social gaming revolution? Tokyo-based DeNA, the company that makes $1.3 billion a year just by offering mobile games to Japanese cell phone users and acquired ngmoco for $400 million in December, seems to think so. DeNA/ngmoco released an English (and Chinese) version of Mobage, its super-successful Japanese mobile social gaming platform on Android yesterday.

Think of Mobage as Facebook and Zynga rolled into one, but

- available exclusively on cell phones (no PC version)
- with both first and third-party games (DeNA/ngmoco itself is making games, too)
- and a virtual social graph instead of a real one (most of your friends will probably be strangers, like in the Japanese version)

The platform is an entirely new, stand-alone social network with a focus on mobile gaming and with its own virtual currency MobaCoin – and now ngmoco aims at replicating the success DeNA saw in Japan (where the company boasts 30 million users) on a global level.

Mobage in English (“Mobage Global”) is initially targeted at Android users in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. A separate Chinese version (“Mobage China”) has been launched through a local DeNA subsidiary, and just like “Mobage Japan”, it won't be connected with the global platform.

On Mobage in English, players can choose between 23 different titles from the get-go (i.e. Pocket God, We Rule, Zoo Land, Paper Toss etc. – see the full list here), with more than 100 additional games being in development currently.

Much like Zynga, the business model is to offer most games for free and monetize via sales of virtual items. As hinted at above, this model has worked very well for DeNA in Japan where the company is currently listed with a $7.6 billion market cap (you read that right).

Future plans by DeNA/ngmoco include the release of more titles, a Mobage iOS version and expanding Mobage Global to more markets. Competitor GREE (another Tokyo-based mobile social gaming powerhouse that recently acquired Openfeint for $104 million) is expected to make a push into the US market soon, too (that company opened an office in California in January this year).

Possible Atrix 4G Successor Caught On Camera With 8MP 1080p Shooter In Tow

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:20 PM PDT

Here's a mystery for you: Images of a Motorola Android handset have surfaced on Chinese blogs, and it looks incredibly similar to the Atrix 4G. In fact, it looks identical save for a few miniscule changes. The pictures come courtesy of IT168 and were published by ePrice.tw, which seems to think that the display will have a contoured design.

For one, the Atrix's 5-megapixel 720p camera was swapped out for an 8-megapixel 1080p rear shooter, which will apparently have its own dedicated camera button along the side of the phone. The MotoBlur logo is no where to be found, although it's clear in the photos that this unnamed handset isn't running stock Android. We assume that this particular handset has some sort of custom skin on it, but it's totally possible that we're looking at a new version of Blur and we just don't know it yet.

The AT&T logo also relocated to the top of the phone, above the display, and the Motorola logo took up residence on the back where AT&T's stamp used to be. The earpiece has also undergone a makeover, and seems to be a bit bigger and slightly further up the phone than it is on the Atrix.

Despite all the extras we're seeing on this anonymous phone, one key Atrix feature is missing in action: a fingerprint scanner. The Atrix is one of the only phones to sport a fingerprint reader and it really set the phone apart in terms of design. Even though it probably doesn't see a whole lot of action (what with all the different software-related security options offered by Android), I'll still be sad to see such a cool feature get the ax.

There's really no telling what's going on under the hood of this bad boy, but I'd assume that the hardware changes we're seeing in these photos only scratch the surface of what's new underneath. Check out more photos after the jump.

atrixcomparison atrixlookalike1 atrixlookalike2

[via Unwired View]

Vodafone Blue 555: The Facebook Phone That Came Too Late

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 04:10 PM PDT

Here's a classic case of a missed opportunity if there ever was one: the Vodafone 555 Blue is, if you'll pardon the term, a dumbphone with a Facebook button. It's simple (no fancypants OS here), has a decent-looking keyboard, and it's got just enough connectivity to keep your average FB junkie from getting the shakes.

But is such a phone practical in today’s market? Alas, the 555 Blue is overshadowed by such handhelds as the HTC Status/ChaCha and Salsa, honest-to-goodness Android smartphones that take the same concept and flesh it out with better hardware. The 555, with its 2.4-inch display and 200 MHz processor, looks downright flimsy in comparison. Why purchase a phone like this when it requires a data plan, and even the cheapest smartphones out there have access to Facebook apps?

Think back a bit though — judging by the hardware, the phone seems about two years old. Think of the impact, dumbphone or not, it would've been back then. Even then it wouldn't match up to a smartphone, but considering it wouldn't have nearly as many value smartphones to compete, it suddenly begins to look a bit better in comparison. A bit more novel. Maybe even, dare I say, cool?

Probably not. But given that it’s completely outclassed by all of its rivals, the 555 Blue is almost certainly too little too late.

Sprint’s Nexus S 4G Gets Final Price Cut: Free At Best Buy, A Penny At Amazon

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 02:16 PM PDT

Less than two weeks ago, Sprint cut the price of its Google Nexus S 4G by half to just $99 on-contract. That had me pink in the cheek with barely controlled glee, so you can only imagine my reaction when I saw that both Best Buy and Amazon were offering the device for free (and nearly free).

Best Buy promises all the Google phone you can handle for free as long as you sign on for a two-year contract, while Amazon lists the handset for $.01 (still on-contract). The phone originally launched with Sprint in May for $200 with a two year agreement, and then got cut to $99 when AT&T picked up the Nexus S 4G a couple weeks ago and listed it for a Benjamin at Best Buy. Obviously the deals at Amazon and Best Buy beat both carriers' prices, but you'll have to be a Sprint fan to take advantage of it.

Honestly, we didn't expect a phone like this to fall into the free bin so quickly, so if you aren't already salivating over a soon-to-be-launched phone, the Nexus S 4G is definitely worth consideration. Specs include NFC support, a 1GHz processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a 5-megapixel camera.

[via Phone Arena]

Xperia Arc Comes To US Without Carrier Support

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 12:51 PM PDT

Ever since it was first spotted this past winter, we've wondered how long it would be before we'd have an Xperia Arc of our own to not notice in our pockets. For months rumors flew about which U.S. carrier would be lucky enough to nab the svelte smartphone, with AT&T emerging as the fan favorite. Well, summer has come, and so has the answer — the Xperia Arc is, carrier-wise, flying solo.

It's frankly a little weird to see a phone that received as much hype as the Arc not get picked up domestically, especially when our Molson-swilling neighbors to the north can pick it up for $100 on a contract with Rogers. What's more, the U.S.-spec Arc packs support for AT&T's 2G and 3G bands, which makes rather clear Sony Ericsson's carrier of choice.

AT&T could still pick the device up down the road — the X10 sold in plenty of foreign markets before it flew under an orange-and-blue banner — but nothing's a given yet.

The Arc is set to debut on Sony's retail website, Amazon, NewEgg, and Buy.com this August. Expect to throw down $599 for a piece of the action if you don’t feel like waiting for an acquisition that may never happen.

Qualcomm’s Awesome Augmented Reality SDK Now Available For iOS

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:59 AM PDT

Back around July of last year, Qualcomm launched a software development kit for building Augmented Reality apps on Android. The idea was to allow Android developers to build all sorts of crazy AR stuff (like games and apps that render things in live 3D on top of a view pulled in through your device’s camera) without having to reinvent the wheel by coding up their own visual-recognition system. It is, for lack of a better word, awesome.

And now it’s available for iOS.

For those unfamiliar with Augmented Reality — or for those who just want to see something cool — check out this demo video I shot a year or so back:

Sometime in the past few hours, Qualcomm quietly rolled a beta release of the iOS-compatible SDK into their developer center. This came as a bit of a shock; Qualcomm had previously expressed that, while an iOS port would come sooner or later, their main focus was building this platform for devices running their Snapdragon chips (read: not Apple devices).

And yet, here we are. This first release of the SDK supports the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and fourth generation iPod Touch — none of which have Snapdragon CPUs in them. Furthermore, this release supports Unity (a WYSIWYG-style rapid game development tool) right off the bat, whereas the Android release didn’t get Unity support until a few months. Developers can also work in straight in Xcode if they so choose.

This platform lowers the “You must be this crazy of a developer to ride this ride” bar considerably, so expect an onslaught of Augmented Reality apps in the App Store before too long.

(Full disclosure: Qualcomm held a development contest focused on this platform last year. I entered on a whim, but placed just outside of the ranks that walked away with prizes. Probably didn’t need to be disclosed, but transparency for the win.)

Rdio To Offer Family Unlimited Plan, Broke Music Fans Rejoice

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:48 AM PDT

It was just last week that Greg brought us a first look at Rdio's forthcoming iPad app, and now the streaming music contender has dropped another bombshell on us.

Last night, Rdio CEO Drew Lerner let slip that in addition to their current line up of plans, they will launch an "Unlimited Family" plan that lets users "share an account with multiple people at a discounted rate". With this, Rdio is breaking out of the pricing rut that they and their competitors have been stuck in, and on top of that offer a compelling new concept for music sharing.

Currently, Rdio and their closest competitors share a strikingly similar pricing model: $4.99 nets you unlimited access to their respective music catalogs from PCs (and in Rdio and MOG's case, Roku boxes). From there, a jump up to $9.99 yields access on the go via apps for most of your favorite mobile devices. While the core offerings remain the same, the particulars (i.e. offline playlist syncing, support for different mobile devices) vary from company to company. The battle to differentiate at identical price points is ultimately great for consumers, but the idea of offering a group rate for music lovers is breaking new entirely new ground in the music streaming space.

At this early stage, there are no details about what the new access plan will cost or when it will roll out, but much will be revealed in an online event Rdio plans to hold in coming weeks.

It’s Dangerous To Go Alone: SimpleGeo And Urban Airship Partner Up For Location Notifications

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:00 AM PDT

Over the past couple of years, push notifications have become a vital part of the mobile picture. There are so many apps, and so much that you can do on smartphones, that you need a system to alert you when something comes up that you’ll want to know about. But these notifications are still not a particularly easy thing for developers to wrap their heads around and implement. That’s why Urban Airship exists. And all of the same things can be said about location. Which is why SimpleGeo exists. So it seems to be a good match that the two of them are hooking up for a partnership.

As they’ll announce as OSCON (the open source developer conference) today, Urban Airship and SimpleGeo have signed a long-term strategic partnership agreement. Given the wide-range of services that both companies offer, this could ultimately mean many things. But the core idea is to provide developers with a simple way to offer location-aware push notifications in their applications.

What if you enter an area that happens to be near a deal that one of your apps is offering? Such a partnership could make it easy for that app to implement a way to send it to you when it matters most — when you’re there, for example. Or what if it’s a heatwave in your city and an app on your phone can recognize this and send you a message to head somewhere for a cool treat? Those kind of things will be possible.

“Location has long been the Holy Grail,” says Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship. “On mobile, the potential is there for sure but thus far execution has been extremely poor. So we have taken our time to make sure we partner with the location experts to align with our vision of real-time, context-aware, personalized push notifications. This will make apps a lot more useful for everybody — marketers, consumers and developers alike,” he continues.

Rob Bailey, SimpleGeo’s VP of Biz Dev, cuts right to the heart of why this really matters for both companies though. “Geo-targeted notifications are a massive area for opportunity in revenue for SimpleGeo and Urban Airship.” Such functionality is a big value proposition for a lot of app makers. And many will undoubtedly be willing to pay for it. “We’re very excited to be going after this opportunity together,” Bailey continues. No doubt.

The two sides say the functionality provided by the parternship will be rolling out in phases. Phase one will start in Q3 and will see Simple Geo parse location out of Urban Airship’s notifications. This information can then be passed and used through the APIs. Down the road, things will go even deeper, the two sides suggest.

As long as Urban Airship keeps making signs like the one above, I’m all ears for anything they have to say.

[image via twitter/harryh]

The Seemingly Unanswerable Question: Can The Government Use Location Data To Hunt Us Down?

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:47 AM PDT

You remember Locationgate, right? It was that massive national scandal that left both Apple and Google at the center of our discontent, after two German researchers discovered that the iPhone tracks and stores location data automatically. The scandal has spurred numerous investigations into where we should draw the line when it comes to location tracking, and one in particular garnered the wisdom of the NSA's Matthew Olsen, National Counterterrorism Center lead and NSA general counsel.

At a confirmation hearing in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Olsen answered the question we had all been asking for a while: can the government use our location data to track us?

The WSJ reports that Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon posed the question, asking if The Man can "use cell site data to track the location of Americans inside the country." Olsen's response was ambiguous at best, although he seemed to suggest that the government does in fact have that authority: "There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist," said Olsen. "It is a very complicated question."

Well that just about clears it up then, doesn't it? Remember the good old days when the feds actually had to do a little work to find suspected criminals? Good times. Anyways, since Olsen's answer fell short of any sense of clarity, the "intelligence community" — another awesomely vague reference — intends to write up a memo that will actually answer the question. A California senator, Dianne Feinstein, asked that the memo be completed by the time the committee reconvenes in September.

The question posed by Senator Ron Wyden inherently steps into the Fourth Amendment's territory. The Fourth Amendment promises protection and privacy for both the citizen and his or her possessions against unreasonable searches. Whether or not that search is unreasonable is based on the searchee's subjective and objective beliefs about their own privacy (among other things).

A criminal may subjectively believe that his old cigarette butt is private property but that won't stop Law & Order detectives from using it to nab DNA evidence. However, if society as a whole collectively believes that the expectation of privacy is reasonable, then evidence collected from the search must be thrown out. In other words, if dirty secrets aren't kept in a private place, you can say goodbye to your privacy protection.

But are phones private? We lock them up with passwords, and we certainly don't "borrow" each other's phones the way we do clothes, books, and DVDs. So how can data from our private phones be used to track us down?

The reason Locationgate was so upsetting to so many people is because it shattered the perception that our phones are locked down little safes that hold and guard all of our secrets. But Apple and Google both maintain that the data collected is encrypted and anonymous if sent back to the company, which again confirms our original thoughts: our phones are private and it is only reasonable to expect privacy when it comes to your phone.

Hopefully, that memo will read the same.



T-Mobile Buys Good Will With Gift Cards For Customers

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 07:23 AM PDT

How does that old phrase go? "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch?" Intellectual heavyweights like Milton Friedman and Robert Heinlein got a fair bit of mileage out of the quote, and it seems at least one person over at T-Mobile HQ has heard it.

The result? According to TmoNews, T-Mobile has begun to send out free $25 gift cards for use on anything (short of bill payments) inside T-Mo corporate stores. Sounds like a free lunch so far, right?

The gift cards have been trickling out into the public for at least a few days now, but nothing solid has turned up about exactly which customers are able to benefit. If typical carrier logic applies, I'd wager T-Mobile would focus on getting these out to folks nearing the end of a contract term, or to those who just re-signed or recently activated.

Still, there's probably much more at play here. If a good database marketer was involved, then I'd expect them to have a precise subset of customers they deem worthy of free T-Mobile money. Depending on the criteria (years with company, average bill amount, recency of last contract extension, etc.) are found to be most important, they'll generate a list of deserving people based on how well they rank in each criterion. In short, they would have found a way to send those gift cards to those most worth it for T-Mobile to please.

On top of that, there's usually a temptation to spend more than originally expected when gift cards come into play, so T-Mobile certainly aims to gain from this stunt. Regardless of motive, all your T-Mobile customers out there should keep an eye on your mailboxes, just in case.

Motorola Droid X2 Gets Bumped Up To Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:57 AM PDT

The Droid X2 is one of those phones that you learn to quickly stop judging by its bezel. Despite having nearly identical hardware to its less powerful predecessor, the handset shipped with some pretty notable under-the-hood improvements. But one thing was still missing: Gingerbread.

Luckily, Verizon has released the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update this morning so the Droid X2 can continue to masquerade as a 2010 handset while performing like its fresh out of the box.

Of course, improved copy and paste, faster performance, and more detailed battery information are all in tow as part of the overarching Gingerbread update, but Motorola has baked in some goodies of its own, too. The MotoBlur UI will now sport new colors and widgets, and the software-based keyboard has been enhanced with multitouch. The camera app will now allow geo-tagging of photos and the calendar app has also seen some improvements.

The update notification should appear automatically on the Droid X2, but if you're feeling antsy go ahead and check for an update manually in the System Updates portion of your Settings app. But be sure to tap into a WiFi network first, or you may be waiting a while: the update is 101MB.

[via Android Central]