Foursquare Adds NFC Support To Its Android App

In addition to the updated “Explore” feature that rolled out to Foursquare’s Android and iPhone applications this week, the social discovery service also added a special feature to its Android app that sort of flew under the radar: support for NFC.
NFC, or near field communication, allows devices to exchange data over short distances, typically with a wave or a tap. In Foursquare’s Android update, NFC support has been added for the app’s Venue, Lists and Me pages.
On Android, NFC support has been rebranded for marketing purposes, and is called “Android Beam.” The touch-to-share functionality lets NFC-enabled Android phones share information between each other, including contacts, web pages, and videos, for example. Any Android developer can also use the NFC APIs provided by the mobile operating system to add specialized NFC actions to their own apps.
With the Foursquare update, Android 4.0 users with NFC phones can now share their lists and the venues they’ve visited with a friend just by tapping phones. Users can now tap phones to initiate friend requests or tap their phone against an NFC tag or poster to check in.
Unfortunately, the functionality is currently limited to phones that have both an NFC chip built in and run Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). At this point, that means the Galaxy Nexus is pretty much your only option. (But that’s why you got that phone, right? You wanted to use the latest technology first. Well, here you go.)
The question remaining is why would Foursquare bother to push out an update that impacts such a small niche of the current Android user base?
In an Untether.tv interview with Holger Luedorf, VP of Mobile and International at Foursquare, he talked about why Foursquare added NFC to its app.
“The good news is the technology is already there,” he says. Plus,”going forward, some of the other platforms will be NFC-enabled.” (Please mean iOS!)
But it’s also about making the Android experience the best for its users, Luedorf said.
“The user experience is great. You just hold your phone against the tap [point]. The checkin screen automatically pops up with the right venue. You’re basically shaving very valuable seconds off the checkin process,” he says.
“We try to leverage the native experiences and APIs that are available through the platform as those usually drive the best user experience,” Luedorf continued. “We’re trying to leverage this because we feel that pinpointing someone down to a location through an NFC chip definitely has some value.”

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iPad 3 To Have Quad-Core CPU, LTE, High-Def Screen

 

You’ve just got to love the timing. First, Apple announces their education-focused media event smack dab in the middle of CES. Now, just as CES is winding down, Bloomberg has “three people familiar with the product” spilling purported details on the next iPad. Whether or not Apple won CES without even being there, they’re certainly trying.

None of the leaked details are particularly new, but that it comes from Bloomberg and they’ve seemingly got full confidence in their source(s) makes them a bit more credible than rumors prior.

Here’s the gist of it:

The next iPad (Bloomberg calls it “iPad 3″, though even that detail is of course unconfirmed) is said to have gone into production this month, with production ramping up until February, with a launch in March.
It’ll have a quad-core CPU (as opposed to the dual-core A5 found in iPad 2)
It’ll have a “high-def” screen
Support for LTE (4G)

The most curious bit? The use of the phrase “high-def” instead of “Retina” with regards to the display. If Apple was throwing around the “Retina” term internally, at least one of Bloomberg’s three sources presumably would’ve thought to mention it. If the sources mentioned it, Bloomberg would have squeezed it into the article somewhere — and they didn’t. With leaks like this, what’s not said can be as important as what is. Higher-res screen? Yes. But the absurdly high-resolution that a “retina” iPad would require (something like 2560 x 1920, higher than any monitor Apple has ever made regardless of size)? Probably not.

Source: techcrunch

Apple's iBooks 2 is revolutionary, but not yet

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

LG details 55-inch OLED TV at CES 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

Apple's iBooks 2 is revolutionary, but not yet

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