In May, Google launched a long-awaited music service that landed with somewhat of a thud. Compared to some of the rumors that were flying around, Google Music turned out to be a rather basic offering. It was nothing more than a "cloud locker" for one's own music files. Not a streaming service. Not an MP3 store. Instead, the service was more analgous to Amazon's Cloud Drive, except without an accompanying music store.
That's about to change, according to a report from the New York Times. Google is currently in negotiations with music labels to launch an MP3 store as part of Google Music. The move would put Google in more direct competition with Amazon and Apple, the latter of which is the market leader in digital music sales.
Did you upgrade your pods, phones and pads to iOS 5 yesterday? If so, you may have noticed something dramatically un-Apple-like in its design. The Newsstand "app" for storing magazines and the like is actually a folder, which means you can't put it into folders... or so you thought!
Newsstand is a strange, abnormal feature of iOS. It sucks up your publications, so you can't decide where they go, and it stands out badly from other folders, visually. Fortunately, though this will surely be fixed soon, there is a temporary trick to put it in a folder! All credit to 52 Tiger for discovering this, but it's important to share it with you as a public service.
Twenty-four hours after Apple released iOS 5 and accompanying iCloud storage offering, Box has announced that they're offering iPad and iPhone users 50 gigabytes of free storage starting tonight. It's also increasing file upload limit from 25 MB to 100 MB.
To get that amount of storage from iCloud, users have to fork over $100 per year to Apple. Of course, one thing third parties like Box and Dropbox cannot provide is the seamless, cross-device syncing of things like contacts, calendars, reminders and Web bookmarks, nor can you easily use it to remotely back up your entire device in the cloud, as iCloud allows. Instead, Box has its own iOS app from which cloud-based files and folders can be managed.
The release of one of Apple's biggest updates to its mobile operating system yesterday was not without issues. As iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners flocked to their computers to upgrade their devices to the new OS, Apple's servers were apparently caught off guard.
The first snag many noticed was the estimated download time for the software. As more people downloaded iOS 5, some began to see prolonged wait times, sometimes up to a few hours. The problems only got worse from there.
Last week Android Open Handset Alliance member Myriad unveiled Alien Dalvik 2.0 that can port Android anywhere. Alien Dalvik runs is a virtualization tool for Android that runs in the cloud, meaning that Myriad can bring Android anywhere and everywhere.
When we wrote about Alien Dalvik 2.0 last week we promised to track them down and get a hands on video this week at CTIA Enterprise and Apps in San Diego. We are a couple days behind, but finally got a presentation of Android running on an iPad. Check it out below.
Among the many features rolled out to iOS device owners today is one that's pretty easy to lose sight of alongside things like iCloud, iMessage, Newsstand and many of the other 200 or so odd features Apple launched today.
The iPad's native Music app (essentially, a stripped down version of iTunes for the iPad) got a visual overhaul as part of iOS 5, complete with a new home screen icon. In terms of feature set, the app remains pretty basic. You can play back albums and podcasts, manage playlists and of course, jump over to the iTunes Store to download more music.
Apple rolled out iOS 5 to owners of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices today. Among its most significant of its 200 new features is iCloud, which lets users wirelessly sync apps, music, contacts, calendars, photos and more across multiple Apple devices.
If you own more than one Apple device (or plan on it) and want to set up iCloud, here's how to get started.
New data from Experian Hitwise show that Google continued to widen its lead in the U.S. search market last month. Google accounted for 66% of searches in September, gaining by 2%, while Bing and Yahoo lost ground by 3% and 2% respectively. The remaining 66 search engines analyzed by Hitwise powered 5.8% of U.S. searches.
But for how long will this kind of search query dominate the way we find things on the Web? With today's release of iOS 5, Apple - Google's mobile rival - sets the stage for Siri, an artificially intelligent voice search assistant that goes out of its way not to use Google to find results. Google is winning the search game, but Apple is about to change it.
Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, released its biggest update in quite some time today. Now available for download via iTunes, iOS 5 comes with more than 200 new features for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.
Among the most significant of the enhancements is iCloud, Apple's new wireless content syncing feature, which Steve Jobs unveiled along with the rest of iOS 5 at the World Wide Developer's Conference in June. The new service allows users to sync contacts, photos, calendars, music, movies and other content across devices and back everything up safely online. The upgrade also eliminates the need to plug Apple's mobile devices into a computer to get software updates and sync content.
In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for September 2011. There are some great game, new browser releases and innovative uses of augmented reality this month. There is also a new section for prominent updates you may have missed during the month. Check it out below.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
