Good ol’ Jim Dalrymple:
As expected, Apple on Monday announced an event to show off the company’s next generation iPad. The invitation, sent to me by Apple, says the event will take place at 10:00 am on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Has the iPad 3 invite gone out literally as Eric Schmidt stepped onto the #MWC stage? AMAZING power play.
This seems like the first time Siri has extended beyond core Apple applications. Perhaps a hint of what could be announced in March.
Sharif Sakr talks about the Nokia 808 PureView Smartphone:
Now that Carl Zeiss-lensed camera: it handles continuous-focus 1080p, but is claimed to have an incredible sensor resolution of over 41-megapixels when shooting stills — or 34-megapixels for 16:9 images. It uses some clever interpolation jiggery-pokery that condenses four or five pixels into one pixel, to produce a smaller file size for the output image.
Like maybe to 3 or 4 images on the phone? How many pictures can the phone fit? Clearly for camera people… but would they really buy the phone? Why not just have a Nikon D series camera?
Interesting idea coming out of the MWC:
AT&T Inc. is preparing a service that would let content providers and developers of mobile applications pay the wireless carrier for the mobile data its customers use, the carrier’s network and technology head John Donovan said in an interview Monday.
Hopefully this leads to an end consumer benefit. Perhaps at least answers the throttling issue that keeps coming up.
Both brands that probably should have been taken to the graveyard around version 7, but we’ll take it.
Now, how bout letting go of Windows? May I suggest Tiles?
Earlier this week Apple acquired app search company, Chomp. What could this mean for Apple? Well, likely a much better, enhanced Genius feature for one.
ABC News gets the exclusive look of the Foxconn factories, largely due to the relationship with Apple and also due to the Fair Labor Association’s recent push to investigate the company.
E.B. Boyd for Fast Company:
Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands’ Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.
As soon as you like a business page, you are opting in to seeing ads from them directly in your news feed. These ads are also displayed as sponsored links on the right hand side of the home page, as well as when viewing photos.
Nice catch by Eric Slivka at MacRumors:
T-Mobile USA today announced earnings results for the fourth quarter of 2011, revealing a net loss of over 800,000 contract subscribers during the quarter. The carrier, which is now the only one of the four major U.S. carriers to not carry the iPhone, specifically blamed the launch of the iPhone 4S for the defections, mentioning the iPhone by name seven times in its release.
7 times means someone was bitter about a deal that went sour. Of all the carriers to have the iPhone after AT&T, T-Mobile would have been the easiest to implement due to using GSM technology. But let’s not forget about the epic breakup that occurred between them last year. That’s likely the main reason the deal never came to fruition.
It was about time that the software available on Android and the Google ecosystem starting to propagate beyond the phone. A scoop by Nick Bilton for the NY Times:
The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, the Google employee said. “You will be able to check in to locations with your friends through the glasses,” they added.
Everyone I spoke with who was familiar with the project repeatedly said that Google was not thinking about potential business models which might also benefit from tools like this free w2 generator. Instead, they said, Google sees the project as an experiment that anyone will be able to join. If consumers take to the glasses when they are released later this year, then Google will explore possible revenue streams.
There looks to be some clever UI and gesture based navigation involved. The best part is that ads will not immediately be prevalent. And they shouldn’t be given the high price tag of 250-600 for the service. If it runs on 3G/4GLTE though, you may expect to have a service charge on the goggles to get the best usage out of them.
I am personally weary about this, for a completely random reason: ever wonder why the virtual boy failed? Giving someone a dedicated screen to wear all day could seem cool, but imagine the strain.
As mentioned during our most recent podcast, The Verge has a great article on the current problems with Research in Motion and how Blackberry went from hottest device on the market to irrelevant and fast. The article is worth a read as it dives pretty deep into the RIM’s history.
At the crack of dawn, Apple surprisingly announces Mountain Lion for developer preview. We cover the implications of the next OS, including what it means to be iOS-ified. We also discuss iPad sales; cookies being exploited, Nook/Playbook/Tablet B-lists, and the fall of RIM. Thanks for sticking with us for 30 episodes!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:23 — 32.6MB)
Ars Technica documents an interesting case of a blatant ripoff app being approved and making its way to number 3 on the charts within the App Store. An interesting read on the Apple approval process and how this fake Pokemon app managed to gain so much attention.
The price has been slashed to $199 as well. Too little too late?
This makes it mostly comparible to the Kindle Fire, except for the storage and RAM, which may not be an issue given the low demand for resources in a reader-tablet. As media gets richer, however, the Kindle has the clear advantage.
Looks slick.
Update: Or not.
Interesting insight from the Washington Post, noting that the NY Times has lost some exclusivity in publishing information about Apple products because their recent investigations into Apple’s supply chain:
Under normal circumstances, that combination of shortcomings would qualify as an embarrassment for the New York Times. Yet if the lack of access is even remotely related to Apple’s dim view of the paper’s investigative reporting, the paper may take pride in losing the hunt for “Mountain Lion.”
Safari contains third-party blocks for cookies across all the OSs that it runs on; however, Google needed to leave a cookie on the device in order to preserve +1 analytics. Their solution is quite devious, and dare I say — “Evil”?
Google has since blocked this from occurring, but other third-parties are still using methods that are inexcusable.
This week we talk about the iPad rumor mill; Apple & Google’s war in the living room; More on patent uselessness; Facebook’s push to show more ads; Bing & a look at social media SEO. This show could be sponsored by you! Check us out on our website for more information.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:58 — 64.1MB)
The chart is absolutely insane.
My post on a new blog from my friends Ben & Ben, “Bumba Broadsides”, on the Ethics of Google and the recent anti-trust search debate.
“The growth is now driven primarily by smartphones,” the executive wrote on AT&T’s Innovation Space blog. “Add to that new customer additions and the continuing trend of upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, and you have a wireless data tsunami.”
A few Apple rumors becoming confirmed: the launch date will be a week after an event held on March 7th, and it will include LTE capability on both AT&T and Verizon.
Many enthusiasts (myself included) believe that the only way the LTE antenna would be included is if the battery life isn’t sacrificed. I’m going to bet that the iPad 2 (the current model) will be eliminated entirely, except for a black version at 16GB with no antenna.
As pointed out by the Huffington Post:
The new design moves caption, comments and advertisements to the right-hand side of the picture. Previously, users could view captions and post comments directly below the photo.
I thought the new design puts emphasis on the photo more and makes for a better experience, since mostly commenting is secondary to actually viewing the photo (hence the left to right flow). Of course, the biggest jarring feature aside from the photo is the advertisement, but I quickly turned on my blinders towards it.