Imagine sitting down at your desk in the morning and having your computer automatically power up, recognize you and log into your desktop. From there, you can swipe from app to app using your hands - not on a touchscreen, but by moving your hands naturally through the air. Unlike the mouse of yesteryear, your machine recognizes gestures in 3D space and you can manipulate things on the screen using your fingers, selecting photos from a 3D gallery or even browsing the Web.
None of the technology described above is new, but it could be coming to personal computers over the next few years, if a recent patent filing from Apple is any indication.
Have you noticed that the cost of some new e-books seems to be a few dollars higher than it was before? The U.S. Justice Department certainly has and they're investigating why that is and if it's legal. Specifically, the DOJ is looking into whether Apple and major publishers colluded to set e-book prices in a manner that would violate antitrust laws, the agency confirmed yesterday.
Media reports have pointed to the existence of such an investigation since last year, but yesterday an Justice Department official publicly acknowledged it, saying, "We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general." That's right, Europe and a handful of U.S. states are concerned about e-book pricing as well.
If you're having trouble loading content on Flipboard this morning, you are not alone. The service has been struggling due to high demand for its new iPhone app, the startup confirmed via Twitter.
Flipboard for iPhone went live in the App Store last night, more than 16 months after the socially-curated digital magazine launched on the iPad. The iPhone version takes the same functionality it had on the tablet and elegantly packs it into a much smaller sized device.
For iPad owners, the personalized, socially-curated digital magazine Flipboard is one of the absolute must-install apps for the device. For many, social news-reading apps like this have begun to replace printed magazines and newspapers all together. Pretty much since it first debuted on Apple's tablet in July 2010, users have been clamoring for an iPhone version of Flipboard. Today, that wait ends.
Flipboard's latest update, available now in the App Store, brings the same social media-fueled reading experience to the smaller screen of the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Before the tablet wars were in full affect, the tablet rumors wars raged on the Internet. Primary topics of conversation in this pre-iPad era were what Apple was doing with tablets (and what it would be called), the TechCrunch Tablet and the dual-screen Microsoft Courier. The CrunchPad, as it was going to be called, was usurped by Fusion Garage and turned into the JooJoo, a more or less terrible device that will live in infamy in the graveyard of devices gone by. Apple, as we know, has taken over the world with the iPad. The Courier? Abandoned by Microsoft before ever seeing the light of day.
Two developers miss what the Courier could have been. Together they started a group-funded Kickstarter project called Tapose to bring the defunct-Courier to the iPad. The app is expected to go live later this week. Check below for exclusive screenshots.
What's an Android user to do about this not-so-shocking fact? Rejoice?
A new report from ComScore tries to make it look like 10% of iPhone users is a huge marketshare when, really, it's not. For the three month period ending October 2011, reports showed that 234 million Americans ages 13-and-older used mobile devices. Apple has bumped its way up to number four, trailing behind Samsung, LG and Motorola. It did pass up RIM.
What might actually be more significant than the amount of mobile subscribers achieved by Apple is that of the five brands listed in this report, Apple is the only one that has actually gained more subscribers over the past three months alone. And just to be clear, this data was collected before the launch of the iPhone4S.
A new study from research2guidance shows that the market for apps is continually moving toward segmentation and niche stores. The Apple app store, which launched in July 2008, has contributed significantly to the rise of niche apps. The study defines three types of niche stores: Platform-oriented (apps for a specific OS platform such as AndroidPIT or Crackberry a.k.a. BlackBerry), target group-oriented (apps for a segment of users, such as business, adults, kids) and carve outs (mobile network operator with its own app store in the Android Market or something like "@work" by Apple).
It's no secret that mobile commerce has exploded this year. People are glued to their mobile devices, period. With a shift toward mobile and tablet commerce, we anticipate that these two types of devices will continue to play an increasingly important role in the marketplace. 2011 has been a good year for mobile and tablet, and we've identified seven key trends that will continue evolving as this space widens and expands. Let's get into it.
Oh, and if you want to check out our other top trends lists, take a peek at our founder Richard MacManus' top social web products, Jon Mitchell's top web-based consumer products, Dan Rowinski's top mobile products and John Paul Titlow's top five online music trends.
Since launching with the iPhone 4S in October, Apple's new voice-controlled personal assistant feature called Siri has been enamoured of Apple fans, mocked by others and been found to have a few humorous Easter eggs built in.
As cool as Siri seemed to many at launch, like so many things, it's true potential wasn't really unlocked until a crafty developer got his hands on it and started tinkering. Pete Lamonica managed to create a hack called SiriProxy that allowed him to control his thermostat using only his voice (more on that below). He set up a proxy server and posted his code on GitHub so that more developers could take advantage of it and push the limits of what Siri can do. And indeed they have.
What started last week as a relatively minor controversy over one company's tracking of smartphone users' behavior has ballooned into a full-fledged scandal. The curious digging of developer and researcher Trevor Eckhart revealed that an application called Carrier IQ (CIQ) has been logging and transmitting a ton of information about what people are doing with their phones, including personal data like phone numbers dialed, URLs visited and the content of text messages. First the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to Eckhart's defense after CIQ sent a cease-and-desist letter to the developer. Now U.S. Senator Al Franken is demanding answers from CIQ.
The controversy initially swirled around Android-based smartphones from a variety of manufacturers. Last night, iPhone hacker Chpwn reported that he had found traces of CIQ in Apple's iOS operating system, although what he found looks less alarming than what Eckhart initially saw elsewhere.
