Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Dec 21, 2010 @ 08:00 AM
Wired Epicenter:
The companies, Allot Communications and Openet — suppliers to large wireless companies including AT&T and Verizon — showed off a new product in a web seminar Tuesday, which included a PowerPoint presentation (1.5 MB PDF) that was sent to Wired by a trusted source.
The idea? Make it possible for your wireless provider to monitor everything you do online and charge you extra for using Facebook, Skype or Netflix. For instance, in the seventh slide of the above PowerPoint, a Vodafone user would be charged two cents per MB for using Facebook, three euros a month to use Skype and $0.50 monthly for a speed-limited version of YouTube. But traffic to Vodafone’s services would be free, allowing the mobile carrier to create video services that could undercut NetFlix on price.
Certainly not great news that the compromised FCC document was passed. This will have a sad impact on how we consume the web on mobile networks.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 @ 07:48 AM
I feel like everything I say after that will fall flat. Just go watch the video again. This changes everything we know about lame international tourists. Well, they will most likely still be lame, but they can at least find their way around town a little bit better.
The future!
Yowza. Augmented reality at one time held the promise of something special. It's great to finally see those things come to fruition.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Thu, Dec 16, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Techcrunch:
For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team. Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others.
In some kind of weird founder solidarity, the slide was originally posted on Twitter by MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier.
Listed under the ominous “Sunset” are: Delicious, Altavista, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Picks
Oof. Not sure what is going on over at Yahoo. My final remaining prayer is that they don't touch Flickr. Or if they do, sell it back to the original founders to do as they will. It took ages for Flickr to finally release their iPhone app, and in the time it's been released, updates have been few and far between.
In the time it's been released, Instagram has taken the iOS world by storm. It's a free app that adds a social following feature revolved entirely around taking photos. It's only available on iOS and has no web version. It's been downloaded millions of times! Can you imagine if Flickr had the foresight? Their app is a poor social alternative.
So sad.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Thu, Dec 16, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Gmail Blog:
I use two Gmail accounts: one is my personal account and the other I share with my family (we use it to subscribe to groups like my children's classroom mailing list). Checking these two different accounts used to mean I had to sign out and back in to Gmail all the time. Not anymore. Instead, I can grant my personal account access to my shared family account and view, organize and send mail on behalf of our shared account.
We've offered email delegation for Google Apps accounts for a while — it's super useful for people who want their assistants to have access to read or respond to mail on their behalf. Now this functionality is available for anyone using Gmail. To grant access to another account, click the Settings link in the top right corner of Gmail. On the "Accounts" tab, you'll see a new section where you can "Grant access to your account." For example, below we've given hikingfan@gmail.com access to the hikingfanfamily@gmail.com account.
Whoa, better look out Microsoft. Google is continuing to grow their Google Apps product by leaps and bounds to combat the Office train that has held an iron grip on the enterprise community.
This is just another great step for a super alternative.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Dec 15, 2010 @ 08:54 AM
Google:
We’ve added a new feature to Google Contacts that allows you to revert your contact list and undo any mistakes made up to 30 days in the past. Let’s say you accidentally deleted a bunch of contacts or wiped the contact data from your Gmail account by mistake while syncing to another device. Visit Gmail’s Contacts section, select “Restore contacts” in the “More actions” menu, and choose the time you would like to revert to.
Holy smoke, we did it! Google has implemented was is seemingly the most no-brainer feature in the history of anything. I have several email accounts and none offer this feature. Google Apps keeps knocking it out of the park. Oh, what's that, you can delegate now, too?
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Dec 14, 2010 @ 01:00 PM
Amazon:
Thank you Kindle customers!
Thanks to you, in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we've already sold millions of our all-new Kindles with the latest E Ink Pearl display. In fact, in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009. We're grateful for and energized by the overwhelming customer response.
It's about time Amazon has finally come out and said something about their Kindle sales. Most have assumed that since Amazon hadn't released sales figures previously, the Kindle was a dud. Now there are at least some figures to back up their "best selling" claims.
This seems to prove that Kindle is indeed a fine alternative to the iPad as a dedicated reader.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Dec 13, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
Techcrunch:
One of the most successful mobile games right now is Angry Birds, which has been downloaded more than 30 million times across different mobile platforms, with 12 million of those being paid downloads on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. But on Android, the game is free, and is supported by advertising. Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 5 million times on Android since that version launched in October. “By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds,” says Peter Vesterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” behind the game at Rovio Mobile.
This news shatters the idea that the Android platform isn't a viable alternative to the iOS App Store. Sure, Angry Birds is essentially this generations Pac-Man, but this is surefire proof. The Android ecosystem is still fragmented, but there is a growing audience looking for apps. Whether it be Google Apps, or a fun game to pass the time.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Thu, Dec 09, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
The Loop:
Reports earlier this week claimed Apple would launch the Mac App Store on December 13, ahead of the holiday shopping season. However, according to my sources, Apple will launch the store in the new year.
While a specific date was not given for the official opening of the store by my sources, Apple will meet the 90-day deadline given during its October “Back to the Mac” media event.
Given the date of the media event and Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ commitment to launch the store within 90-days, we should see the Mac App Store sometime on or before the third week of January.
Jim's sources with-in, or close to, Apple have historically been very accurate. The Mac App Store has the potential to create the ultimate alternative to searching and Googling for apps on your Mac.
If this store is a success, it has the chance to break that hesitation for new buyers now that they know the app finding/buying process is just as easy on their iOS device. This could be a huge change on the computing landscape.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Dec 08, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
BoyGeniusReport:
Well, I'll say this. It looks pretty good. If everything is web-based, you'll have no trouble getting into your
Google Apps and using
Postini. Sign me up.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Dec 07, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Google:
Nexus S is the first smartphone to feature a 4” Contour Display designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and along the side of your face. It also features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16GB of internal memory, and NFC (near field communication) hardware that lets you read information from NFC tags. NFC is a fast, versatile short-range wireless technology that can be embedded in all kinds of everyday objects like movie posters, stickers and t-shirts.
Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.
Fresh off the supposed end of their Nexus One campaign, Google has gone on and revealed the Nexus S. The Nexus idea at first was so that Google could sell a clean OS build of their Android phone, without the hassle of going straight to the carrier. They even put a pink on their front page to the phone.
The problem was that they only sold a couple 100,000 of the phones after several months. Not even Google.com could push a phone without the ease of walking into a store to touch one yourself.
This time around Google will be going another alternative route, inside of Best Buy.
This is also the very first phone to contain Gingerbread, Android 2.3 and includes many new features. Time will tell if their second foray into the Nexus project will be a success.