What do you get when you combine two companies that innovate some of the best products on the Web and have a propensity to build early and ship often? Some terrific tools and superb functionality, that's what. And that's what is happening today as browser maker Dolphin is teaming with cloud storage juggernaut Evernote.
Dolphin and Evernote are teaming up to release two extensions to Dolphin's Android browser. The first and most exciting is powerful and popular Web-based image editor Skitch. The other is Evernote itself. These new functions are the first time that Evernote has reached out to a third-party Android browser.
iTunes U has been around for a long time, but its expansion last week onto iPhones and iPads, as well as into new content like K-12 curriculum, has truly made this a 2.0 release. And it's very, very good.
The iTunes U website carries the bold title "Learn anything, anywhere, anytime." That's an overstatement for sure, with 500,000 assets it's more like learn something about many things. But it's great either way. I spent the weekend neglecting other duties to play with iTunes U and below are some thoughts, positive and negative. It's not perfect, but I am really excited about it and I know I'm not alone in that. I'd love to know your thoughts about it too.
A patsy is a person that is easily taken advantage of, the guy that gets set up to take the fall so the big wigs in power can extricate themselves from a situation free from blame. As you may have heard, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has named a new CEO today, Thorsten Heins. He takes over for co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis who are both moving to non-operational seats on RIM's board of directors. Poor Heins. This is a big break for a guy that started his career as an engineer. Yet, Balsillie and Lazaridis are setting Heins up to fail. RIM has a new patsy.
These days, the smartphone wars are typically viewed as a competition between the platforms of two companies: Apple and Google. Despite its years-long dominance of the desktop, Windows has hardly been a blip on the smartphone marketshare radar, where it clocks in at just under 2% of the market.
That's all set to change within three years, according to a growing chorus of analysts. The latest to vouch for the impending growth of Windows Phone is iSuppli, who last week predicted that the platform could outperform Apple's iOS by 2015.
What do you get when you mix a train wreck ravaged by a tornado then washed away with the torrents of a tsunami? That would be BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Now the company has a new chief executive, as co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are turning over their tightly held reins of the once-powerful smartphone manufacturer to chief operating officer, Thorsten Heins.
Who is Thorsten Heins? He is a product designer and engineer that rose to be the COO under Balsillie and Lazaridis. Most people outside of the smartphone industry may not know of him for precisely that reason. RIM's co-CEOs have never been known to share the spotlight. Heins has said that he is willing to license RIM's QNX-based smartphone operating system and perform with "rigour and flawless execution." Execution of what, exactly?
Teenagers are endlessly fascinating, strange balls of neurotic/sexual energy. What company isn't interested in collecting data points about teens' behavior toward technology? (If you can think of one, please tell me in the comments. I promise to send you a shout-out on Twitter.)
A new study from Openet, a provider of Service Optimization Software (SOS) conducted a small-scale survey using data from 503 U.S. 13-17 year-old cell phone users. The survey discovered that cyber-bullying on cell phones was a major issue. Interestingly, only 1% of teen sext, which dispels a myth perpetuated by the teen texting trend wave. And apparently cyber-bullying on social networks is not an issue for the teen set as people previously believed. The real problem starts and ends with phones.
We all know the relative truth that there is no such thing as malware that can strike iOS devices. Malware breeds in incestuous pits of the Internet with botnets and spammers lurking around every URL or third-party app store. Oh, but never on your iPhone. Malware is as synonymous with the Internet as search, chat or porn. Yet, when browsing with you Mac or iDevice, there is still a fair likelihood that you will run into a malware stricken site that could potentially do you harm.
AnchorFree, makers of the powerful Hotspot Shield application, are adding a new function to its offering today. When browsing the Web, Hotspot Shield will now alert users when a site they visit contains malware. It may seem a trivial update to for the malware-invincible iOS but there is more danger than meets the eye.
Your mobile device is a little extension of you, loaded up with your text messages, emails, social apps (Facebook, Twitter), news apps, finance apps, photography, location-based social networks, music, travel, sports, health, lifestyle...the list goes on. But how long do you actually keep those apps open, and when do you use which apps?
A new study entitled "Falling Asleep with Angry Birds, Facebook and Kindle--A Large Scale Study on Mobile Application Usage," looks at mobile application usage behavior, and yields some surprising results. Users spend nearly one-hour (59.23 minutes) on their devices, but the average application session, which means opening an app to closing it, lasts little more than one minute, or 71.56 seconds." The study looks at which types of apps are used when, and pontificates a bit on why that is.
The golden age of mobile photography is upon us. Smartphones are now more capable at producing high-quality photos than digital cameras were just five years ago. Editing photos has been an evolving process but a lot of great services have been released to mobile users in the last year such as filters from Instagram or full-featured suites from Aviary and Skitch. Today, Aviary is making a dramatic update to its platform to gives users a set of powerful tools to edit photos on the go.
Microsoft is keeping mum about plans to integrate Skype into its Windows Phone.
There has been mounting speculation that Skype would soon be a feature on Windows Phone since Microsoft announced plans to acquire Skype last year. The company had initially promised the introduction of Skype-equipped Windows phones by the end of last year, and last week the Telegraph reported that Microsoft Rick Osterloh said at the Consumer Electrionics Show in Las Vegas that the feature will be available "soon."
But on Monday, a Microsoft spokesman refused to pin down the specifics of the product launch.
