MobileCrunch |  |
- UpTo Lands Seed Funding To Go “Beyond Status Updates And Check-ins”
- AQUOS PHONE IS14SH: Sharp Integrates Android 2.3 Into Feature Phone Body
- Facebook Opens Mobile News Feed As Viral Channel For Games
- RIM Denies BlackBerry 10 Delay Allegations: Claims Are “Uninformed”
- TinTin iPad Art Book Blurs The Line Between Books, Movies, And Apps
- Avatron’s Air Dictate App Makes Siri Take Notes On Your Mac
- Verizon To Launch a Home Media Server In 2012, Plans To Eliminate Set-Top Box
- Evernote’s Skitch Arrives On iPad…iPhone Version Still “In The Works”
- Android Phones Pass 700,000 Activations Per Day, Approaching 250 Million Total
- SpotMe Payments: A Great App For Settling Up
- SNES Classic Mega Man X Gets An Extra Life On iOS
| UpTo Lands Seed Funding To Go “Beyond Status Updates And Check-ins” Posted: 23 Dec 2011 05:00 AM PST  A new, relatively stealth startup called Rock City Apps is gearing up for the launch of a mobile application called UpTo, and has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures to finance the development of the product. The company, which is based in Detroit, Michigan, plans to launch its first iPhone app ‘soon’ and lets you indicate your interest by inviting you to sign up to receive an invitation to the private beta. You can do that here. Rock City Apps co-founder and chief executive Greg Schwartz, previously founder and CEO of Mobatech and director of business development at Warner Music, has this to say about the service:
Sounds interesting, but we’ll have to wait to see if it actually is.
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| AQUOS PHONE IS14SH: Sharp Integrates Android 2.3 Into Feature Phone Body Posted: 23 Dec 2011 04:35 AM PST  It seems Sharp saw good sales when the company launched the so-called AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH on the Japanese market, the world’s first clamshell Android phone. Today, Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE IS14SH [JP] went on sale in Japan, and again they squeezed a ton of smartphone functions into a feature phone body. The obvious target here are customers who want to type on a physical slide-out keypad but don’t want to miss out on the typical specs a Japanese Android phone is offering. Here are the main features:
In Japan, the AQUOS PHONE IS14SH will be marketed by mobile carrier KDDI au, but don’t expect to see this handset outside the country anytime soon.
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| Facebook Opens Mobile News Feed As Viral Channel For Games Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:39 PM PST  Once upon a time, Facebook game companies like Zynga fattened up their user counts thanks to viral distribution to non-gamers through the news feed. Facebook later curtailed this channel, forcing developers to concentrate on paid marketing and true word of mouth to grow. A new boom period could be coming, this time for mobile developers, as Facebook announced today that it is testing game stories in the mobile news feed. This could attract devs to its recently launched HTML5 mobile gaming platform with bait of reaching hundreds of millions of daily active Facebook mobile users. Facebook learned a lot about balancing developer success with user experience during that first boom period, often called the wild west days. Game spam such as users asking all their friends to install and give them virtual good overran the news feed, making it a bore to non-gamers. Facebook will surely be monitoring the volume of mobile news feed game stories to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Rather than pepper the feed with individual stories, Facebook is using aggregated stories that read like “Rose Yao and 9 other people recently played games”. Below users see a few friends names and links to the games they played, and can tap to expand to see the whole list. Tapping a game will launch its HTML5 version, or that native app if already installed. The aggregated stories give users control, so those that want to discover something to play can, while those uninterested can breeze by. Earned viral channels also democratize the Facebook platform, as they provide exposure to small developers without big marketing budgets. Facebook launched the HTML5 platform to make sure Apple and Google weren’t the only ones making money off mobile games. Developer adoption of the channel has been a bit sluggish so far, though. The opening of this viral channel could convince developers to experiment with Facebook mobile. Facebook also made a few other announcements to the benefit of web Facebook game developers. Users will now see 6 bookmarks instead of 4 while playing games, which should boost retention and re-engagement. Home page bookmark notifications will now clear when clicked, making the arrival of new alerts more noticeable. The separate Games & Apps dashboards have been combined so users don’t have to check two places, and game categories have been refined so Facebook can more accurately feature high quality developers. Finally, the company launched a Games Tutorial to ease the path to developing games for its platform.
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| RIM Denies BlackBerry 10 Delay Allegations: Claims Are “Uninformed” Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:46 PM PST  I’ll admit to lobbing a few mortars at RIM (alright, maybe more than a few), but it looks like things may be even worse than expected. BGR reported earlier today that RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis lied about the the reason their first BlackBerry 10 devices would be delayed even later into 2012. Lazaridis said during RIM’s recent earnings call that they were waiting for a specific dual-core LTE chipset to be available before their new BlackBerrys would see the light of day in late 2012. It was a strange announcement, considering that RIM has never really fared well in the specs arms race, although they I don’t blame them for trying. What I do blame them for is dragging their feet when it comes to innovation, but that’s a story for another time. The chipset situation may have been a ruse, if BGR’s high-level source is to be believed. According to him, the real situation behind the delay is even more dire — the devices in question may not even exist yet. "RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason,” the source said. “They don't have a working product yet.” It’s a serious accusation to level at RIM, and if it’s true, then they may have already sealed their own fate. Or did they? RIM has just now weighed in on these claims, and their response is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. When it comes to the notion that the company’s first new BlackBerrys are essentially vaporware, RIM flatly denied the rumor: “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this [chipset] decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed.” There we have it, straight from the horse’s mouth: it’s a parts problem. The release goes to say that the chipset in question is “required to deliver a world class user experience” and that “any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.” Of course, even if the claims were true, RIM wouldn’t broadcast the news of their failure to every media outlet with a pulse. They’d do — well, they’d do exactly what they’re doing now. They would deny everything, and (hopefully) get in gear behind closed doors to make sure none of this gloom-and-doom forecasting ends up being right. Ultimately, I doubt that either side is offering the entire truth. Information Week points out that the leak could be the work of a disgruntled RIM employee, and RIM’s PR team would do their best to manage a situation like this before it led to another crisis for an already-beleaguered company. Things inside RIM may be even worse than we know, but if they can succeed in delivering a user experience that’s worth waiting for, all of this he-said-they-said business will have been for nothing. Let’s just hope the longer wait pays off.
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| TinTin iPad Art Book Blurs The Line Between Books, Movies, And Apps Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:25 PM PST  If you are a big TinTin fan, you probably know that Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of TinTin opens today in theaters. But if you are a really big fan, there is also a companion coffee table book called “The Art of The Adventures of TinTin.” But don’t get the $39.99 print edition. Get the $5.99 iPad app instead. It has all the same art work, plus a whole lot more—3D models of the characters and vehicles from the movie that you can spin around, HD video clips, and immersive 360-degree experiences. (Watch the video below for a run-through of the app’s features, with an intro by Spielberg). The app was published by HarperCollins in partnership with Holopad, one of Edo Segal‘s startups (part of his bMuse operating company), which is the developer that provides the technology platform. All of the artwork comes from WETA Workshop, Peter Jackson’s motion-capture art and special-effects studio, which is effectively the author of the book. (This would be amazing for The Hobbit). It has all sorts of immersive features. “You blur the line of what is a book and movie because all of these images become movie clips,” says Segal. “The whole book becomes a treasure trove you are exploring.” For instance, you can “scrub” some of the illustrations to fade between the original comic book and the artwork for the animated movie. Every image is a separate element on the page which can be tapped and seen in full-screen. My favorite part is there are a few places, like TinTin’s room, that are complete 3D spaces. You can tap into those images and move the iPad around like a window into this other world. Depending where you point the iPad, using the gyroscope, it shows different parts of TinTin’s room, or the captain’s cabin. Although the app was produced by taking the same Adobe file that was used to create the print book, that was just a starting point. It took Holopad about another month and half to add all the extra immersive elements. “It was very clear to us that what we had to do was not an enhanced e-book,” says Shane Norman, director of interactive marketing at HarperCollins. The TinTin iPad app will be the first of many such projects. “I definitely see it as a model for how we treat an interactive book,” he says. I’ve said this before, but digital books and magazines are best thought of as apps. Segal has similar views on the future of media. Tablets are a new software-defined medium. As such, an iPad book they requires more than just text and images, and maybe some video.
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| Avatron’s Air Dictate App Makes Siri Take Notes On Your Mac Posted: 22 Dec 2011 10:13 AM PST  Perhaps best known for the Air Display iOS app, Avatron is at it again with new a iOS dictation app called (what else?) Air Dictate. But of course, Avatron wouldn’t just cook up a straightforward dictation app — there’s a twist. Instead of just taking your voice input and transcribing it into a file on your iDevice, it actually syncs with your Mac and dumps the interpreted output into your text field of choice. As long as both devices are on the same wireless network, the connection yields quick and (mostly accurate) transcriptions. According to Avatron, these accurate transcriptions have Siri to thank. Even though Apple has yet to release a public API for their intelligent agent, Avatron has seemingly whipped up their own way to interface with Siri, and the results are pretty impressive Setup is dead simple — download the $.99 app from the App Store, and install the free Air Dictate receiver on your Mac. Once the two apps are paired up (a process which takes no more than a few seconds), you’re ready to get your gab on. Transcriptions were surprisingly accurate, although it does have a tendency to stumble with similar sounding words (“he’s” vs. “is,” for example). A little extra focus on enunciation should clear that up fairly quickly, though. Is this going to replace your fancy Dragon Dictation setup? Probably not, but if you’ve already got your share of Apple devices laying around, there are far worse ways to go.
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| Verizon To Launch a Home Media Server In 2012, Plans To Eliminate Set-Top Box Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:59 AM PST  Verizon will be rolling out a new Media Server product for its FiOS customers later next year, which will be a single hardware device that will eventually eliminate the need for a set-top box altogether. The server will be capable of streaming HD TV to all devices in the home, including the TV, of course, but also gaming systems, mobile devices and tablets like the iPad. Although the company has not officially announced details, timeframe or pricing, we were recently given a sneak peek into the company’s plans. You can see the Media Server in this promotional video discussing Verizon’s focus on the energy efficiency of its products. Here, Tushar Saxena, Director of Technology at Verizon, talks about the upgrades Verizon’s set-top boxes have seen in recent months. He shows a big box that’s an example of outdated tech (hey, that’s my box!) and a more compact, 30% more energy efficient model. Saxena then shows off new set-top boxes, yet to be released, which are even smaller, and will soon be small enough to “velcro behind your TV,” he says. But what’s interesting is that these tiny set-top boxes are meant for the additional TVs in the house – your main TV will be attached a larger Media Server, also shown in the video, underneath the stack of set-top boxes. The server will stream media to other Internet-connected devices, including laptops, Xboxes, PlayStations, tablets and mobile devices like the iPhone, the video explains. Saxena says that the plan is to eventually eliminate the set-top box altogether by providing applications to all the IP-connected devices, including TVs, that can directly communicate with the server over Wi-Fi. This transition should occur in a “few year’s time,” he notes. Getting rid of set-top boxes means increased energy efficiency of course, which was the point of the video. But a Verizon spokesperson tells us that the Media Server itself will be released in late 2012. Verizon is also running tests involving streaming 3D HD TV over Wi-Fi, using the same media server technology. Routers in Verizon’s test labs have successfully transmitted a 3D HD FiOS signals (40 Mbps) over 200 feet, through sheetrock and steel walls, without the loss of video quality. There’s a demo of that in action here using routers with multiple antenna arrays streaming over the 802.11n standard in conjunction with the media server hardware. During a time when everyone is thinking of cutting the cable, so to speak, it’s interesting to watch developments like this which are more correctly envisioning TV as a service that should be available on any screen in the home. Now here’s hoping Verizon’s pricing hits the mark, too. Update: Motorola wants you all to know that the Media Server is actually, an “advanced set-top gateway — a nextgen, smarter set-top that can now communicate to multiple devices in the home,” according to a company spokesperson, “…when people read the set-top is going away, they automatically (and mistakenly) assume our business is doomed.” Is there an emoticon for an eyeroll?
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| Evernote’s Skitch Arrives On iPad…iPhone Version Still “In The Works” Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:51 AM PST  Skitch, the popular photo editing Mac app acquired by Evernote in August, is now available on the iPad. The release follows the launch of the Skitch for Android app earlier this year, and is the first iOS-compatible version available. Using the new app, you can annotate just about anything – a new photo, one from your camera roll, a screenshot, a map or you can just draw on a blank canvas. And, of course, when you’re finished with your creation, you can save the photo to Evernote for safekeeping. After choosing your starting point (a photo, screenshot, etc.), you can edit your creation using a number of built-in tools that take advantage of the iPad’s touchscreen interface. Objects you draw on the screen can be moved around with your finger or pulled into the trash. A pencil tool lets you draw freehand. You can add text. And you can drag, pull and adjust other objects like arrows, circles, squares and lines. None of this is entirely ground-breaking stuff, but Skitch does what it does very well. It’s a pleasure to use. In addition to the Evernote integration, your creations can also be tweeted or even – and this is pretty cool, too – mirrored to any Apple TV connected screen via AirPlay. It’s DIY Powerpoint with free tools. Nice. But I know what you’re thinking: WHERE IS SKITCH FOR IPHONE ALREADY? Evernote says its “in the works,” which is what they’ve been saying since August. According to the company blog post, they launched on iPad first because it’s “the ideal form factor for tactile annotation.” What about the nearly four-month-old Android app then? You can grab the new iOS version of Skitch from here.
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| Android Phones Pass 700,000 Activations Per Day, Approaching 250 Million Total Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:45 AM PST  Android just keeps ramping up higher and higher. Andy Rubin tweeted yesterday that there are now more than 700,000 Android phones activated every single day, which is up from 500,000 activations per day last June. You can see how steep the ramp has been over the past three years by looking at the chart up top, which comes from Horace Dediu at Asymco. Dediu estimates that the total cumulative number of Android devices activated so far is between 224 million and 253 million. To put this in perspective, last October, Apple announced a cumulative total of 250 million iOS devices sold. But that number includes iPods and iPads. If you look at only iPhones, Apple was selling only about 190,000 a day, based on the 17 million iPhones sold last quarter. That number did not include sales of the iPhone 4S, which sold at a rate of 1.3 million a day its first three days on sale. We won’t find out until Apple’s next earnings report how many iPhones it is currently selling, but it is likely less than 700,000 a day. Apple and Android constantly play a game of leapfrog when it comes to announcing numbers. Apple likes to emphasize the bigger iOS number (which includes iPods and iPads), which arguably is more relevant since they also run iOS apps. This numbers game is targeted at developers. The bigger the number, the bigger the potential market. Of course, there are other factors to consider, such as OS fragmentation and which platform is easier to actually make money on.
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| SpotMe Payments: A Great App For Settling Up Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:00 AM PST  SpotMe, a handy little tool for sharing expenses in groups, is now a top 10 mobile app in the finance category and a featured app in Apple’s App Store Rewind 2011. Zornitza Stefanova, the CEO of SpotMe’s maker Boomerang Digital, describes the app as “a social messenger for payments.” What that means is that the app takes over the often uncomfortable job of having to ask your friends for the money they owe – it does that for you. An early version of the app was launched this July, but the most recent update just arrived mid-December, bringing with it helpful new features like messaging and email summaries. After installation, you can sign up for an account using Facebook and then add friends to a group by pulling their info from your phone’s address book or by typing in an email manually. It’s really fast to set up the bill you’re splitting, the money you lent, the rent, or any other expense you want to split with others. And speed, as we all know, is key when doing these sorts of things on the fly, lest you turn into the geek with your nose in your phone all night. As new bills are added to the group, an automatic email goes out from SpotMe to those owing as a reminder. Stefanova says the top use cases the company is seeing involve college students, bills split among friends, roommates, and the occasional IOU. Although at present, the app only functions as a tracking tool for managing money owed, the company has something really interesting cooking: it’s planning to integrate a person-to-person (p2p) payment mechanism next year, sometime around the launch of its Android app. That will then position SpotMe against other p2p payment apps, including PayPal, Venmo, ZipPay, Square, Dwolla, and others, which should be interesting. So many of today’s apps have started by addressing the technological hurdle of moving money digitally using your smartphone, but not the psychological hurdle that come from having to talk to friends about the money they owe you. The core focus of the app, with its simple setup, email and push notifications, is to let the app do the dirty work of reminding friends about money they owe. Meanwhile, you can pretend that the money was the furthest thing from your mind. “Oh? You got an email about the dinner we split last week? I totally forgot!” (Sure you did). We definitely needed an app for that. You can check out the newest version of SpotMe here on iTunes. (Sorry Android users. For now, the web app will have to do).
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| SNES Classic Mega Man X Gets An Extra Life On iOS Posted: 22 Dec 2011 06:11 AM PST  Ready for some more SNES-flavored nostalgia on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Capcom has recently released Mega Man X for iOS, which should brighten the day of just about anyone who spent their formative years slaying robotic octopi. Unlike the other versions of Mega Man that have found their way to iOS, Mega Man X ditches the classic pixelated look for smoother visuals — I think it’s a novel touch, though some gamers disagree with me. Classic MegaMan games always required precision and some nimble fingers, and some tweaks had to be made to make it work with with a 3.7-inch touchscreen. The normal difficulty level has X constantly charging his X-Buster, while holding down the fire button turns on auto-fire mode. After a few minutes with the game, my only real concern is that the jump and fire buttons seem just far enough apart that they’re easy to miss when things start to get hairy. If those thumbs of yours don’t move quite like they used to, there’s also an easy mode baked into the game. It may just be me, but the the thrill of clearing a particularly tough section is part of MegaMan’s appeal — considering how easy the normal mode can be, I imagine most people would skip easy mode altogether. The end result is a version of Mega Man X that manages to strike a good-but-not-great balance between difficulty and playability. Purists may scoff at the changes, but taking a game that just begs for a controller and adapting it for a device without buttons is no small feat, and the nostalgia factor may be enough to sway gamers into forgiving its quirks and odd design choices. Mega Man X is live in the App Store, and it can be yours for $4.99.
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