tech & mobile news: January 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

955 Dreams Raises $3.25 Million Seed Round, Launches “Band Of The Day” On iPad

Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. ? Learn More

955 Dreams, the startup behind Apple’s iPhone App of the Year Runner Up “Band of the Day,” is today releasing the new tablet-optimized version of the app for the iPad. In addition, the company announced it has closed on a $3.25 million round of seed funding. Investors participating in the round included 500 Startups, m8 Capital, Kapor Capital, Felicis Ventures and CrunchFund (Disclosure: TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington is an investor in CrunchFund).
As a part of the funding, Dave McClure of 500 Startups will join the company’s board, filling the first seat held by an outside investor.
955 Dreams’ Band of the Day app was released late last year, and was soon adopted by hundreds of thousands of users in its first few weeks on the App Store. The app, which features free songs (full songs, not just clips), artist bios, reviews, music videos and more, caught the attention of those at Apple thanks to its popularity as well as its unique design. The company had previously focused on long-form experiences like the App Hall of Fame title, The History of Jazz, but with Band of the Day, the team began to push out new content on a daily basis.
955 Dreams is not just a development shop that builds apps – it actually writes the artists’ reviews itself for Band of the Day. Explains Co-founder Kiran Bellubbi, “we’re a publishing company, and [our apps] are built on our own publishing platform.”
The platform powers all of 955 Dreams’ mobile apps, including Band of the Day, The History of Jazz and On the Way to Woodstock, all three of which were App of the Week, two of which made it into the App Store Hall of Fame, and one (BotD), which made it to App of the Year runner up. In other words, every time the company launches an app, they hit it out of the park.
With Band of the Day in particular, it was the combination of the editorial and the app’s overall design, with its simple, efficient and elegant navigational elements, that helped it reach over half a million users in just four months. With the launch of the iPad version today, the company expects to reach several million by the end of the year.
The new tablet version of the app is similar to the iPhone version in terms of feature set, but takes advantage of the large screen. Although the style is very magazine-like, the app is careful not to take up too much space on the iPad’s hard drive, as some magazine apps do: it’s only 10 MB.
Says Co-founder and CDO T.J. Zark of the new iPad version, “we refined every speck of the experience, the UI, the backend, and the overall look of this product. Just like the calendar that Band of the Day is built around, the way band photos reveal as you run your finger over the calendar…this is the result of a thousand tiny iterative decisions. We try very hard to take nothing for granted about the end experience. We strive to delight users!”
The company is also now experimenting with Android and is preparing to make its app publishing platform available to select partners, perhaps one or two content providers this year. “We’re talking to a few of them,” says Bellubbi, “but it depends on the reach of the content and the quality of the content. That’s extremely important to us.”
In fact, Bellubbi was downright obsessive about his products’ quality, scoffing at any so-called competition. “My personal belief is that when you put garbage into a garbage platform, you’re going to get garbage out…We try to focus very much on the user experience, and there are no compromises made.” (No wonder Apple likes them).
The new Band of the Day iPad app is available for download here.

955Dreams Inc. is a new age publishing company. We publish magical titles on mobile devices. We’re a small group of hackers and designers who are working on mobile products that will engage and excite you. We love what we do and our users love the products we’ve built. We are currently self-publishing titles in the Music Category and have built a platform that allows us to deliver fantastical apps which delight our users. Our designs are executed at a very...

Learn more
View the original article here

$300 Samsung Galaxy Note Will Hit AT&T On February 19

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More
attnote

Samsung isn’t the first company to break into the phablet space, but those of you waiting for a (more than) worthy successor to devices like the Dell Streak 5 won’t have much longer to wait. AT&T has just announced that their pocket-busting Galaxy Note will be hitting their sales channels on February 19, complete with a $300 price tag.
Most of the device’s details — 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED display, LTE radio, and handwriting support thanks to the included S-Pen — were revealed or reiterated at this year’s CES, but now the question is whether or not people will take the plunge on a device that’s not quite a phone and not quite a tablet.
AT&T hasn’t exactly priced the Galaxy Note to move, but they’re not alone on that front. We’ve seen Verizon adopt the $300 price tag for most of their recent high-end smartphone releases, though AT&T has typically shied away from pricing their smartphones so steeply. They’re probably hoping that the novelty of a device that hovers somewhere between being phone and a tablet will be enticing enough to justify the price, but we’ll soon see how the public at large takes to Samsung’s fabulous phablet.
If you’re the type who likes getting things before everyone else (and really, who isn’t?), you may want to wake up bright and early on the February 5th. AT&T is pushing their pre-order process with the promise of a Galaxy Note in your hands a full two days before it makes its way to store shelves, and I can imagine more than few phablet fans using that 48-hour window to rub their new purchase in other people’s faces.

View the original article here

Monday, January 30, 2012

What Happens When Apps Go On Sale?: Revenue Up 22% On iPhone, 29% On Android

In a new research report from Distimo, the app store analytics provider examined two different ways that allow mobile developers to get a bump in both their download numbers and revenue. One way, which is within the developers’ control, is putting the app on sale. Within the first day, iPhone developers see an average increase of 41% in revenue using this method, and see revenue increases of 22% by the sale’s end. Android apps, however, rose just 7% on day one, but closed out the sale with higher percentage gains than either iPhone or iPad.
The second method Distimo looked into is getting the app featured in the app store. This is up to the app store’s operator, like Google or Apple, of course. (We’ll examine Distimo’s findings on featured apps in a subsequent post).
When a developer decides to put an application on sale, there’s a delicate balance that has to be achieved. The sale price has to be low enough to encourage more downloads, obviously, but it also needs to be low enough that it encourages enough download volume to make up for the lost revenue.
To examine what happens during when apps go on sale, Distimo examined the 100 top grossing apps in the iPhone App Atore, iPad App Store and Android Market. On the first day of the sale, the average revenue increase by +41% in the iPhone App Store, and by 15 days in, was up by +22%. On the iPad App Store, the day one effect was even greater: up +52% on day one and up +19% by day 15.

But the boost in the Android Market was the largest of all, although this couldn’t immediately be seen. By day one, revenue was just +7% on average, but by day 15, it was up +29%. These are percentage increases, though – not dollar amounts.
Keep in mind, too, that these gains are averages. Not all developers were so lucky. In looking closer at the numbers, Distimo found that 44% of iPhone apps lost revenue during the sale, with 23% seeing a decline in revenue by more than 20%. This is why the sale price setting is key to maximizing the gains. For example, a discount of a dollar on a $7.99 app lowers the revenue, but a discount of $3 increased revenue by 131%. In general, the tipping point occurred when the app’s price was cut in half or the app was offered in Tier 1 ($0.99) or Tier 2 ($1.99).
The graph below shows what happens when prices were cut by 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 80%. The conclusion here is that it can pay to put an app on sale, but to actually earn more revenue, you have to make a significant price cut.

This all begs the question, then: what price should a developer ask? There isn’t a simple ratio to use. The right price depends a lot on what kind of application it is, where it’s sold, what category it falls into and its overall complexity. Simple apps that are easy to make (and copy) are priced lower. You can see the variations by revenue, category and app store here:

Since this is a lot of info to take in, we’ll look at Distimo’s findings related to apps being featured in the app store in a separate post. You can find the full report here.

We know app stores. Distimo was founded to solve the challenges created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled with equally fragmented information and statistics. Distimo was launched shortly after the introduction of the first app store. App stores have clearly shown since that time that they are the way forward for content distribution. The app store model offers an enormous opportunity for developers to get their content out and dramatically improves content discovery by consumers. However, the mobile market...

Learn more
View the original article here

LG Nitro HD Surpasses 1 Million Units Sold

Jordan Crook studied English Literature at New York University before entering the tech space. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Crook dabbled in mobile marketing and mobile apps as well as doing device reviews for MobileMarketer and MobileBurn. Crook is fascinated with alternative energy production and greentech. She is now a writer for CrunchGear. ? Learn More
nitrohd

comScore recently ranked LG second in the world in terms of mobile OEM market share, and it would seem the good news keeps on coming for the smiley-face company. The Nitro HD, or Optimus LTE if you’re from outside of the States, has reportedly hit 1 million units sold.
It was first available in South Korea last year in October, and LG sold 600,000 units on its home turf. After venturing into new lands, including Japan, Canada, and the US of A, another 400,000 units were sold. According to my calculator, 600,000 plus 400,000 does indeed total 1 million units.
If you remember back to our review, we had mixed feelings with the Nitro HD. The 4.5-inch 720p display is downright gorgeous, and certain hardware features like HDMI out, LTE support, and that textured back panel are quite nice. Android 2.3 Gingerbread, however, tends to lag quite a bit on the Nitro.
Luckily, the phone is slated to receive ICS in the second quarter of this year and there are obviously plenty of people who are pleased with LG’s latest endeavor.
[via CNET]

View the original article here

Sunday, January 29, 2012

It’s About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around “Hero” Devices

HTC has gotten to be remarkably good at churning out phone after phone these days, but it’s gotten to feel like each new release is too little too soon. Thankfully, the godfather of Android hardware has come to its senses, as revealed by Mobile Today.
According to HTC UK head Phil Roberson, 2012 is going to be all about giving their customers “something special.” To that end, HTC plans to focus on a smaller number of “hero” smartphones and dial back their presence in the tablet market.
“We have to get back to focusing on what made us great – amazing hardware and a great customer experience,” Roberson said. “We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. HTC’s philosophy as of late seems to have been about continually chasing the bleeding edge by pushing out new hardware before its predecessors have gotten the chance to breathe. It’s refreshing to hear (err, read) that someone at HTC feels the same way, because the glut of options ultimately becomes a big problem for consumers.
Chris Ziegler at The Verge noted that the here in the States, T-Mobile’s high-end HTC Amaze 4G debuted only 120 days after the carrier’s previous flagship Android phone hit sales channels. It’s no secret that technological advances come at a blistering pace, but to push out a new flagship device in four months could easily come as a kick in the gut for customers who splurged on the previous model in an attempt to future-proof themselves a bit.
Being on the bleeding edge is great, except for when your customers are the ones who get hurt. HTC isn’t exactly alone when it comes to this sort of behavior — Samsung’s LTE-packing Skyrocket overshadowed their original Galaxy S II model, and Motorola’s Droid RAZR Maxx trades a few millimeters for some outstanding battery life while leaving original Droid RAZR owners lamenting their luck. Still, while Samsung’s market saturating plans are doing them well, Motorola has already announced their intention to trim down their smartphone offerings for 2012.
Meanwhile, the revelation of their tablet plans (or lack thereof) doesn’t come as a huge shock. The Taiwanese company released two actual tablets in 2011, with a handful of carrier-specific variants thrown in for good measure. Alas, the tablet market has become an ever tougher nut to crack, and while HTC won’t be abandoning it completely, they’ll be spending more time and resources on their main moneymaker: smartphones.
HTC has been on shakier financial ground than it’s used to recently, and at the time they cited “increased competition” in the mobile space as one of the reasons their most recent quarterly earnings ended their six-quarter growth streak. This new move is a drastic one, but it’s worth a shot considering that their once-solid approach doesn’t seem so solid anymore. With Mobile World Congress right around the corner it shouldn’t be long before we get a better glimpse at HTC’s new strategy, though whether it actually works is another story entirely.

View the original article here

Sprint’s Epic 4G Touch Gets Stripped Of Carrier IQ

Sprint has been spending the past few weeks quietly pumping out software updates that remove Carrier IQ from affected devices, and now it looks like Sprint’s flagship Android device (for now) will be able to run wild and free.
Thanks to an update that started making the rounds yesterday, Samsung’s Galaxy S II variant the Epic 4G Touch joins a handful of Sprint devices to get the Carrier IQ cleanup treatment.
Aside from giving Carrier IQ the boot (which Sprint refers to as a “security update”), the new build also includes updated modems and a fix for an issue involving multiple calendar alerts. The only other notable addition in the new update is support for the Commercial Mobile Alert System, which allows Sprint to push out critical public safety updates to customers in the event of an emergency.
While this release is the first official one that removes Carrier IQ from Sprint’s Galaxy S II, Samsung has been working on a clean build for some time now. To wit, a Carrier IQ-free software build for the Epic 4G Touch was leaked one day prior to Sprint’s announcement that they would discontinue use of the oft-maligned diagnostics tool.
If your Epic 4G Touch hasn’t yet been graced with the update, it’s only a matter of time — according to Sprint, the OTA rollout will should be complete within 10 days. Of course, if you’re really impatient, you could always load up a flashy new custom ROM and be done with Carrier IQ for good.

View the original article here

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Sony-Ericsson XPERIA Arc

GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900 / GSM 850

Yes, Capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors- Scratch-resistant surface
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- Multi-touch input method
- Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Timescape/Mediascape UI

- Photocall
- 512 MB RAM
- microSD, up to 32GB, 8 GB included
- 1GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon

- MP3, WAV ringtones
- 3.5 mm audio jack

- Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread)
- HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
- Wi-Fi hotspot
- GPS with A-GPS support
- Digital compass
- Push email
- Instant Messaging

Builtin, 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, touch focus, image stabilization, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, video (720p@30fps)Yes, via third-party application- HDMI port
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- TrackID music recognition
- NeoReader barcode scanner
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
- YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk
- Facebook and

Reviewer: Dave Date: 10 Dec 2011, 22:30 GMT
I'm also using this phone and it definitely does not have secondary camera,...if it has they're hiding it from me bloody well...also weird having video call as you need to have back of phone facing you so they can see you,yet because of this you can't see them unless you're infront of q mirror looking at your screen this way...Sony Ericsson ***ked up I think.

Reviewer: yadan Date: 09 Dec 2011, 21:28 GMT
I was so foolish for not checking out the Arc's scheduling functions before I bought it. Most users don't care too much about calendar functions, but scheduling clients is very important to me.
The Arc doesn't have a function for editing a single entry in a repeating series without changint the rest of the entries in that series. This is really a downer, since much cheaper and less sophisticated PDA's all provide this option. Sony Ericsson has confirmed that they have no update that corrects this deficiency, so if scheduling is vital to you, DON'T BUY THIS PHONE.

Reviewer: Arijit Date: 30 Oct 2011, 05:33 GMT
Good Operating System ; Best Color Resolution ; But One Problem carry that very phone--"No Secondary camera"........

Reviewer: Udayapakash K Date: 26 Sep 2011, 11:27 GMT
system slow and high radiation pls modification

Reviewer: mohammad Date: 11 Sep 2011, 07:30 GMT
that is the best smartphone with HD video and 850*480 resoulation and8.1 mp camera and arc body.

View the original article here

ShoeBox App Now Integrates With Facebook Timeline, Lets You Add Photos To Years Past

ShoeBox, the mobile app that lets you scan old photos and post them online, is today announcing Facebook Timeline integration. Using the newly released version of the ShoeBox iOS application, users will be able to scan photographs of family and friends using their smartphone, tag users by name, and then share those photos to Facebook.
But here’s the really cool part: ShoeBox is one of the first Timeline-integrated apps that’s letting you post photos into the past. By that, I mean you can edit the date on your photo, and it will post to the correct place on your Facebook Timeline. Nifty!
I’ll admit to being a huge fan of what 1000memories is doing with its ShoeBox app, something which probably shows my age. I, like many of you (old people), didn’t “grow up” on Facebook. My childhood and young adulthood were captured by flash bulbs, printouts, and trips to the drug store to pick up prints – not smartphones and social networks. ShoeBox provides an easy way to get those old photos online so they can actually be shared and enjoyed.
In its first release back in October, the ShoeBox app allowed you to quickly snap a smartphone photo of a printed photo, crop, flatten and rotate the image, then fill in missing information, like that which might be scrawled on the back of the printout (where the photo was taken, who’s in it, what you were doing, date, etc.)
However, until today, none of that information actually appeared in the correct format to be useful on Facebook. It only worked to supplement on 1000memories’ own website, its social network of days past at 1000memories.com.
With today’s launch of the new iPhone application, things have changed. Now you can find and follow Facebook friends in the app and tag your Facebook friends by name so they’re alerted when the photos go online, a much-needed addition. You’re also now able to edit the date on the Facebook post to send it “back in time” to the date you specify.
Interestingly, this process of posting to the past could have been automated, but 1000memories says the team decided to use Facebook’s Photos API and not the OpenGraph API. Since the Photos API allows posts to appear on the Timeline in a different way – big and beautiful like Instagram now does – they decided to use it instead.
But the company is pushing Facebook to revive support for EXIF data for the ShoeBox app itself, which would allow users to automatically post pictures to the right spot while also still appearing in the attractive, larger format. EXIF (exchangeable image file format) is a standard format that contains a digital photo’s metadata information, – e.g., details about the camera’s make and model or the photo’s timestamp.
Facebook briefly supported EXIF data during Timeline’s tests, but stopped doing so because users were “freaked out” that Facebook knew when a photo was taken. Now Facebook is now more cautious about when and where it supports EXIF.
However, in a case like ShoeBox’s, using EXIF data would simplify the process of time-stamping these photos appropriately. Although the photo in question wouldn’t have been a digital photo to start, ShoeBox could still send Facebook EXIF data that relates to the scanned-in photo’s actual data of capture as indicated by a user’s caption (e.g., “Halloween 1985,” “beach trip 1997,” etc.).
The updated ShoeBox app is likely to be the first of many Timeline-integrated apps to come, now that the Facebook Timeline is mandatory. Although not everyone is thrilled about Facebook’s new look, when you can get past the knee-jerk “change is bad” mentality, there’s a pretty compelling use case here with the idea of filling out the missing Timeline dates with old photos. With Timeline, Facebook is no longer just a utility for social networking, it’s a digital representation of our lives. For it to be a truer reflection those lives, however, properly supporting the 4 trillion printed out photos in the world would be a good start.
The new version of the ShoeBox app is available here. (And yes, Android is coming).

1000memories is the best way to organize, share and discover the old photos and memories of your family and friends.

Learn more
View the original article here

Friday, January 27, 2012

LG details 55-inch OLED TV at CES 2012

While building the world's first 55-inch OLED TV panel is nice, it's not worth much unless you put an actual TV around it and LG Electronics will have the total package on display next week at CES. Today's press release reveals more about LG's "4-Color Pixel" and Color Refiner technology it's implementing to bring consistent, accurate colors that it claims will be other OLED TV's abnormal color gamut. LG's press release doesn't mention production plans or pricing, but all of this is squeezed into a frame that's just 4mm thick with a narrow bezel and weight of 7.5kg -- we'll let our eyes decide on the quality of its colors once we meet in person.

Source: engadget

AT&T Set Sales Records For Both iPhone And Android Devices In Q4 2011

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... ? Learn More
att

AT&T this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011. Consolidated revenues clocked in at $32.5 billion, up 3.6 percent compared to the year-earlier quarter. They recorded a huge net loss for Q4 2011: $6.7 billion, or $1.12 per diluted share.
Zooming in on smartphone sales, it’s worth noting that AT&T delivered its best-ever quarter to date, hands down.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, the company says it sold 9.4 million smartphones, nearly double the number sold in the third quarter and 50 percent more than the previous quarterly record.
This also led to 19.4 percent growth in wireless data revenues, the company said.
During the quarter, more than 7.6 million iPhones were activated, the “majority of which” were iPhone 4S, and AT&T says more than twice as many Android smartphones were sold last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. AT&T also said it sold 311,000 tablets in Q4 2011.

AT&T is the largest provider of both local and long distance telephone services, and DSL Internet access in the United States and the second largest wireless service provider in the United States.

Learn more
View the original article here

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Huawei brings the world's thinnest smartphone, just 6.68mm

Huawei just brought its biggest guns to CES 2012, and in the smartphone world a big gun is a thin smartphone. The Huawei Ascend P1 S is officially the world’s slimmest smartphone at the unbelievable 0.26-inches (6.68mm), easily beating the 7.1mm thick Motorola Droid Razr.

And if you ever thought there was a gap between Chinese phone makers and first tier companies like Samsung, you’d better rethink as the Ascend P1 S has cutting-edge hardware with TI’s OMAP 4460 dual-core chip with the Cortex-A9 based processor clocked at 1.5GHz and aided by SGX 540 graphics.

The Huawei Ascend P1 S has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels and that resolution might be the only compromise. The handset is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, so you’re not losing anything in terms of software.

On the back, the Ascend P1 S has an 8 megapixel backside-illuminated (BSI) camera allowing 1080p video recording, while up front there’s a 1.3 megapixel snapper. Huawei has managed to squeeze in an 1800mAh battery, and the usual set of connectivity options.

Additionally, Huawei is announcing the younger sibling model - the Huawei Ascend P1, which is almost identical, but has a slightly thicker 0.3-inch (7.69mm) body.

The two handsets are arriving in metallic black, ceramic white and cherry-blossom pink in Europe, Asia-Pacific, North America, Australia, the Middle East and China in the second quarter of 2012.

Source: phonearena

The Apple iPad has replaced laptops for 12% of global enterprise users

[ Click for zoom ]

IDG Connect has finished its "iPad for Business Survey 2012" which is a result of interviews with global IT and business professionals. And the result of the survey shows that many of these enterprise users have put down their laptop and have replaced it with Apple's tablet. The figures show that 12% of those surveyed have replaced their mobile computer with the Apple iPad. 54% said that the iPad has "partly" replaced their laptop and complements the latter. The report says, "If a majority of professionals still use laptops, the iPad has certainly curtailed usage levels. Nearly three-quarters of respondents say that they 'carry their laptop around less' now that they own an iPad."

As far as desktop computers are concerned, the Apple iPad has replaced 6% of these PC's for those IT and business pros who answered the survey. 33% said that the tablet has "partly" replaced their desktop PC. IDG says, "For most, the iPad isn't a substitute for an existing tool or device. Instead, it's a supplement, albeit one with functionality that overlaps with other devices. As a result, the iPad seems to have carved out a niche for itself at the partial expense of several rival form factors." And iPad usage might increase. While reporting its last quarterly figures, Apple revealed in October that 90% of Fortune 500 firms use or are testing the Apple iPad.

Most business users have had to reach into their own wallet to purchase the Apple iPad of those responding to the survey telling IDG that they paid for their own unit. Employees provided the tablet for only 25% of business users involved in the survey. A whopping 79% of the respondents said that they always use the Apple iPad for Web browsing. Reading on the tablet was next with 76% of users checking that off, followed by news consumption at 73% and work communication with 54%.

A look at the survey results shows that a large majority of enterprise users (91%) are doing things with their iPad at home. A slight majority always use the device at work while 40% say it is used sometimes at the office. The Apple iPad is still the most used tablet in the office as figures from last October show that Apple's tablet made up 96% of all tablets activated in the office.

Source: phonearena

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

NVIDIA And Asus Announce $249 7″ Tablet With Ice Cream Sandwich

At NVIDIA’s press conference today, NVIDIA had a couple little surprises. Little being the word, there — they announced a diminutive 7″ tablet to compete with the likes of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. The price, $249, is certainly competitive. But the tablet itself, the hardware anyway, blows them out of the water.

Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, described it as being very nearly as powerful as the Transformer Prime, which despite some marketing and naming mishaps, is still a hell of a tablet. To put that amount of power in a smaller package and reduce the price to that level is a nice little achievement.

Like its elder brother, the smaller tablet (which was not named), runs a Tegra 3 chip inside, which is quad-core (not counting the fifth “ninja core” that does random tasks), and will ship with the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich.

It has a great camera, or so they say, but they didn’t have to convince me that the screen was nice — at 1280×800 and 7″, it’s going to have really nice pixel density, good for reading. Naturally it can’t compete with the Nook and Kindle ecosystems just with specs, but it’s nice to see a power gadget at the budget price.

No dates were mentioned that we noticed, but we’ll keep you posted over the next few months.

Huang also made a surprise announcement that Ice Cream Sandwich would be coming to the Transformer Prime today, as opposed to later this week. Not the biggest announcement of all time, but Prime owners will appreciate it.

Source: techcrunch

Chart: Android Is Catching Up To iOS In Mobile Video Views

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular... ? Learn More
mobile video chart encoding

With 250 million Android devices out there, growing by more than 700,000 activations a day, a lot of mobile video is watched on Android cell phones and tablets. It is not quite as much yet as on Apple iOS devices but it is catching up fast.
A year ago in January, 2011, Apple dominated mobile video views, with iOS devices accounting for 87 percent of all mobile views, according to data from video encoding and short-url service Vid.ly. Android had a scant 5 percent. By December, 2011, Android’s share of mobile video watching grew to 32 percent, while Apple’s shrank to 52 percent.
Vid.ly is a service run by Encoding.com, which launched a year ago. The data is only from its service, but is from a large enough sample (more than 1 million video views a month for each platform) that it should be representative.

Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in Java that utilizes Google-developed software libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards...

Learn more iOS is Apple’s operating system for their mobile devices. It debuted in 2007 with the release of the first iPhone, but has since been extended for use with the iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. iOS’ user interface relies on users’ direct manipulation of the product screen with multi-touch gestures, including swipes, pinches, taps, and reverse pinches.

Learn more Vidly, formerly known as TwitVid (or Twitvid.io), wants to be the easiest way to share video on the web. While one aspect is sharing videos on Twitter, the focus is on other social networks as well, with a key focus on the various mobile platforms.

Learn more Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service, powers video transcoding for 1,500+ companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle and advertising. Blending an affordable SaaS model with sophisticated integrations on the AWS and Rackspace cloud computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale without expensive video infrastructure investments. Encoding.com supports ALL popular web and mobile formats utilizing Encoding Intelligenceâ„¢ to accelerate processing and optimize display on any device. ...

Learn more
View the original article here

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

New iPhone 5 details reportedly leak out

A “close source” has confirmed details on the timing and design of the next iPhone. Speaking to BGR, Apple’s iPhone 5 will launch in fall of 2012, in a similar time frame to this year’s iPhone 4S launch. This contradicts earlier reports that a redesigned iPhone might launch this spring.

The source also indicated that Apple would be using a plastic or rubber material for the bezel, covering a redesigned antenna that will once again encircle the phone, but without any interference from the user’s hand. It will also allow Apple to use a new aluminum back plate, but without plastic inserts on the back plate, like those seen in the iPod touch and iPad.

Other reports have indicated that the new iPhone may use a four inch display, although this was neither confirmed nor denied by BGR’s source. It’s worth noting that other reports indicated that an “iPhone 5” prototype with a larger screen and a new design were originally planned for this year, but that the phone was scrapped in favor of the iPhone 4S out of concerns about iOS fragmentation, as the new phone would have introduced a new resolution that iOS developers would have had to account for.

It’s also expected that Apple may look to put LTE in the next iPhone, as newer LTE chipsets with better battery life become available in 2012.

Source: phonearena

Apple's iBooks 2 is revolutionary, but not yet

All of this adds up to exactly what you would expect from Apple: an amazing set of products that has the potential to revolutionize an industry which is desperately in need of revolution, but will be held back by the fact that it is Apple. E-textbooks with full multimedia and interactive elements is the logical progression for textbooks, and putting better authoring tools has been proven as the way forward in self-publishing to electronic devices, but Apple's need for control means that we won't be seeing the most from these great new tools until competitors catch up.

Perhaps, the other shoe just needs to drop, and Apple will announce a $300 iPad mini at some point this year, but until then this great new system will be in a relative limbo. iPads are huge sellers to be sure, but the cost is still prohibitive for those who need access to these new textbooks the most. Many high schools and elementary schools won't be able to take on the cost of buying iPads, and neither will the students' families. Additionally, while universities will see higher adoption rates for iPads and iBooks, at just $15, it's unclear if the textbooks offered will be university-grade books. And, even if you were hoping to just get your great novel off the ground by self-publishing, you have to lock yourself into the Apple world to do so.

As anyone who has published in the Kindle store will tell you, better creation tools for ebooks is definitely a great step forward. Just looking at the demos of new iTextbooks, it's easy to see the educational value there, but it's hard to see these amazing new tools creating the revolution that Apple always promises. At least, we may not see that revolution until the competitors make more accessible options.

source: phonearena

Monday, January 23, 2012

Vuzix SMART glasses bring Augmented Reality into focus at CES

Vuzix Corporation came to CES 2012 armed with a video eyewear technology that, as they put it in the press release, "breaks the boundaries of conventional optics and display solutions". SMART Glasses Technology is based on integrated HD display engines and waveguide optics, as opposed to refractive and/or reflective optics used so far. What does that actually mean and is this technology really going to make Head Mounted Displays lose their association with bulkiness and strange looks? Read on for a report straight from the CES 2012 floor.

The wares proudly displayed in Las Vegas crown years of internal R&D work coupled with a recent licensing deal with Nokia. The SMART Glasses Technology relies on a compact HD display engine churning out images with brightness and contrast good enough for outdoor use. The output passes through a 1.4 mm thick plastic waveguide lens and the resulting image is extended in 2D into the user's eyes.

Since the projected images are merged with the real world information, you can safely watch a movie on the go without bumping into things. But the company sees the technology as much more than just wearable TV. The glasses are meant to work in unison with Internet connected mobile devices, which leaves the door wide open to augmented reality (AR) based applications.

Whatever AR magic the glasses are set to perform, the software will have a lot of hardware to rely upon. SMART Glasses, or at least some varieties of them, will be able to record and transmit everything that the user sees. They will also be capable of recognizing their environment and their position in the real word.

Throw in some integrated head tracking and options for multiple camera technologies that "broaden the users' sensory perception across a greatly expanded light spectrum" and you can see why, apart from the consumer markets, Vuzix is also eyeing the commercial and industrial markets. It's probably with the last two in mind that the company came up with some pretty interesting form factors, like that helmet mounted monocle for example. Consumers can rest assured, however, that all this cutting edge technology nicely fits into an ordinary pair of shades. Finally, making a fashion statement will cease to be a compulsory part of the deal.

Source: gizmag

Pulse Jumped From 1 Million To 11 Million Downloads In 2011

Pulse Jumped From 1 Million To 11 Million Downloads In 2011; Now Seeing Download Every 2 Seconds

Rip Empson is a writer at TechCrunch. He covers startups, because he loves them. In an unhealthy way. Coverage includes music, social, mobile, healthtech, edtech … listen, if you’re not obnoxious, you’ve got an innovative idea, you want to change the world (while maintaining a sense of humor), he’ll write about your company. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More
screen-shot-2011-11-15-at-11-05-20-pm

In November, Amazon began shipping its new Kindle. At the time, even though reactions were varied, though Amazon hoped for the best, as some projected it would sell as many as 5 million by the end of 2011. Though the indications are that it didn’t get there. However, the media hype and early Kindle sales have still been a boon for a young startup that you’re probably by now familiar with: Pulse.
At launch in November, the suped up RSS-style news reader tailored for mobile devices found itself the unofficial news reader for the Kindle Fire. While Amazon never officially endorsed them as such, Pulse was one of a handful of native apps to appear on the device’s homescreen right out of the box. Of course, Amazon keeps their cards close to their chest, like Apple, and Pulse Co-founder Akshay Kothari tells me that the team didn’t know Amazon had chosen them as such until a few weeks before the device was shipped.
In fact, the Kindle Fire’s sales saw Pulse rack up 1.1 million downloads on Christmas Day alone. Of course, this is aided by the fact that the newsreader app has been both lucky and fleet with pushing designs early on emerging platforms. Steve Jobs mentioned Pulse at the iPad launch event, and although Pulse was subsequently pulled, it started a trend. The app went on to see a lot of adoption on the iPad, and caught fire on Honeycomb (as much as an app can), and has leveraged that early success to secure such optimal placement on the Kindle.
Kothari today shared with TechCrunch that over the course of 2011, Pulse went from 1 million downloads to over 11 million, and are currently averaging approximately one download every two seconds, and 1.5 million every month. Of course, downloads are one thing, active users another. Pulse isn’t ready to share active users numbers, presumably because they aren’t particularly close to the downloads statistics, but people are using it. For example, in total, users have read a total of 1.39 billion stories through Pulse, and shared 9.8 million stories. As a note of tribute to Steve Jobs, 812K stories were read about the Apple co-founder on October 6th.
The app has seen high adoption for several reasons, and part of that is hanks to its touch-based interface (easy swiping/scrolling), clean design, and visual appeal. But, it’s also the fact that it’s been able to strike a number of strategic partnerships with big media outlets, like ESPN, and with deal sites like Groupon. (Pulse now has over 250 publishing partners.)
And, as a word to wise entrepreneurs, Kothari tells me that the success has also been attributable to the fact that the team is on all of the major platforms, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android tablets, Nook, Amazon, Windows Phone 7, etc. Focusing on building apps for each OS and mobile experience is important, and giving readers the ability to sync their Pulse apps across platforms was a big move for Pulse. Kothari says that the key, while difficult to always implement effectively, is to maintain a consistency of brand across mobile platforms, while optimizing apps for each of their particular experiences.
Like others before, he said that the experience building for each is different, but that iOS makes it easy to prototype different looks, there’s a lack of fragmentation, only one screensize for the iPad and iPhone, and they have great tools. The benefit to Android is scale and the quick turnaround cycle. “Mobile hasn’t seen a great A/B testing formula,” Kothari says, but Android gets the closest. Amazon, on the other hand, has done a pretty good job of making it easy for Android developers to build apps for their modified mobile OS. Windows Phone? Well, that remains to be seen.
Pulse has seen some great competition from Flud, which hasn’t seen nearly the same scale and adoption Pulse has managed thanks to its great distribution plays, but it’s trying to push forward the socialization (so to speak) of the newsreading experience.
Because it was a fast-paced, hockey-stick-growth type year for Pulse, the focus was mainly on scaling. But the co-founder said that they’re getting to a point where they feel comfortable with their progress there and are ready to focus more on the social aspects of news, as well as productizing their experience. And, hey, with Streamglider, Taptu, and others, there’s plenty of competition to go around.
They’ve been able to get pretty far with their Palo Alto-based team of 20, but they’re ramping up in their hiring thanks to that $9 million round in June in hopes of doing more with the reams of data they’ve been collecting around what people are reading. There’s a lot of potential around this, just as we’ve seen publishing companies launching news apps on Facebook to get in the news feed, Pulse is looking for the best ways to encourage social news sharing. And as something that’s already, in my opinion, social, there’s plenty of opportunity.
For more, check out Pulse’s stats in their infographic below:

Pulse is an elegant news reading application for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. It incorporates colorful panning story bars and fills them with content from your favorite sources. Pulse redefines news, giving you the opportunity to experience the news you desire from traditional sources, your favorite blogs and social networks â€“ all in one beautiful interface.

Learn more
View the original article here

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Sony Xperia S coming this month

Sony Xperia S coming this month, sooner than expected

The Xperia S is the first handset to come out of Sony, who bought out the Ericsson part of Sony Ericsson couple of months ago.

And as such, the device has been highly anticipated since its announcement at CES 2012. UK users will be glad to find out that the Xperia S is scheduled to be released on January 30. Initially, it was believed that the handset will be ready for customers to buy no earlier than March 9.

Currently, the Xperia S can be found on pre-order at Play.com for £450, which also happens to be the cheapest offer around. Clove and Ebuyer also have the device on pre-order.

Of course, if you are more of a contract person, the Xperia S will be offered on subsidized offers from major UK carriers, too. ThreeUK and O2 are definitely on the list, but T-Mobile UK and Orange UK are expected to join in as well.

Source: gsmarena

Galaxy Nexus ROM Review: Codename Android v1.1.4

The Background

When I first bought my Galaxy Nexus I was thoroughly impressed. In fact you can read both mine as well as other authors’ 24 hour and 48 hour initial thoughts on the matter. As I used the phone more and more I have found that the one aspect of the phone that really got me down was the battery life. Even with the extended battery I still had to plug the device in about half way through my day just to make it through the rest of my work day and I’m not even in a 4G area.

I went through the process of rooting the device, perma-installing Clockwork and backing up my stock ROM and that was it. I still suffered through horrid battery life. While yes Samsung does pledge to bring better battery life and an extended battery helps, I was quite sad at the matter.

Well it wasn’t long after the release of the Android 4.0.3 images that ROMS were popping up. While I was hesitant to flash anything to my device, not because I was scared of ROMing such a ROM friendly phone but because I love stock Ice Cream Sandwich, the battery life was a big issue. I experimented with a few ROMs, GummyNex, AXI0M 2.3 and Tranquil Ice v6 to name a few and I found that while battery life was better, it still wasn’t good enough for my liking.

The ROM of Choice

While searching through various kernel and ROM lists my editor stumbled upon Codename Android 1.1.1. That was the latest version at the time but as I am writing this I am on version 1.1.4. I spent some time reading the forum for various bugs and issues and I found that this one had the least amount of problems. The ROM boasts that everything you want in a ROM is in this one ROM. As the developer puts it:

”Codename Android is a fully open source rom that focuses on speed, usability, and getting every feature that we can get CRAMMED in there”

After downloading the ROM, the Gapps (1.14.2012) and at the time, the Franco Kernel I was ready to flash and install.

The Set-Up

As usual I wiped all data and factory settings, plus the cache and Dalvik cache and flashed the ROM followed by the Gapps package, and finally the Franco Kernel. Sadly at the time I hadn’t backed up any of my apps with Titanium Backup so I had to reinstall all my apps. After that I spent some time getting all my screens back to the way I wanted. Surprisingly, even with downloading all my apps I only used about a quarter of the battery.

It took some time to get all my accounts set up and what not but the ROM adds some amazing features.

A while after set up, Yes it was -11 out.

The Features

The ROM adds some nice features to an already impressive OS. There are now new options in the settings menu that allow you to customize the lockscreen, adding more shortcuts and so on, all the way up to the addition of well, additional softkey mods (see picture below). You can turn off the persistent search bar for extra screen space; add up to 7 total home screens, and even the ability to resize widgets.

Battery Bar and Custom Softkeys

It also adds the ability to customize the pulse notification light without a special app like Lightflow. You can change colors duration, etc. I love the ability to add toggle switches in the notification bar, even the LTE toggle. You can customize which toggles you want too. This added with the performance and battery life of the ROM coupled with the Franco Kernel creates an over all awesome experience.

Custom Options

The Performance and Battery Life

The amazing thing about this ROM is everything seems quicker. I don’t know if you folks noticed but there is some lag time between selecting the camera on the lock screen and it loading up. This is gone, much to everyone’s relief. Menus were snappier and navigating just seemed quicker. Transitioning from one page to the next in the app drawer was smoother as well. NFC works as well, and Google Wallet comes pre-installed with no need for fancy hacking or modding skills.

Battery life on the ROM with the Franco Kernel installed was quite phenomenal. While I don’t have 4G in my area, we’ll get to the 4G later, I was able to get over 16 hours worth of battery life with heavy use on the extended battery (see below). By heavy use I mean six 20 plus minute phone calls, constant emailing, texting, and Internet browsing, plus Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies gaming. That amount of usage would have me plugged in and charging after about 6 hours on Stock ICS. The 16+ hours of battery life has become a daily occurrence and I can safely say that I can go through an entire day without worrying about bringing an extra battery or charger along with me everywhere I go.

Not bad for a day’s worth, with juice to spare

Now I know I am not in a 4G area and for those of you that are, this isn’t a fair representation. However my editor Stacy Bruce has the same ROM installed. He has the Faux123 Tuna Kernel installed because he found that it had better battery life on a 4G connection than the Franco Kernel did. In fact you can see from the image below that he was able to get over a day’s worth of use with mild use. According to him mild use includes “a bunch of emails, couple texts, 2 downloads, 8 pictures (no flash), 20 min of Shine Runner and about 20min of web browsing.”

Stacy was able to suck every last bit of juice out of his battery.

The Conclusion

This ROM has been amazing. I installed it over a week ago and I haven’t looked back. Battery life is a huge driving force for me in choosing and keeping a ROM and part of it is thanks to the kernels flashed. Codename Android keeps the stock appeal but adds some much needed functionality and customization to the Galaxy Nexus. Coupled with battery life you have before you a super amazing ROM.

For me this ROM is as close to stock as you can get but with the option to throw in as many goodies and customizations you can to your heart’s delight. If you want a ROM with really good battery life I would recommend this ROM whole-heartedly. While other ROMS with the same kernels probably have the same performance, the ability to customize this ROM without the need to flash various mods makes this ROM complete. You will find below a link to the ROM, and both kernels for your flashing pleasure and if you haven’t rooted your Galaxy Nexus you can do so by going
source : talkandroid