Find: Android Developers on Google+

Android help, including regular office hours in google hangouts. 

Android Developers Blog

[This post is by Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead. — Tim Bray]

I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with Android since the 0.9 preview SDK was released to developers back in 2007. A lot has changed since then, but one thing that hasn’t is the rapid pace at which new tools, resources, and information have become available for us Android developers. Just look at the last few months.

In December Android Training launched, with its first set of classes designed to demonstrate the best practices behind building great Android Apps.

Earlier this month, the Android design site went live — offering a place to learn about the principles, building blocks, and patterns you need to make good design decisions when creating your Android app interfaces.

We’ve got a lot more planned in the coming year, so to help you keep abreast of all the latest Android developer news we’re launching the +Android Developers page on Google+!

One of my favourite things about Google+ is the quality of conversation around posts, so +Android Developers will focus on being a place for the people behind the Android developer experience, and Android developers all around the world, to meet and discuss the latest in Android app development.

We’ll be posting development tips, discussing updates to the SDK and developer tools, highlighting new Android training classes, and posting video and pics from Android developer events around the world.

We’ll also be using Google+ Hangouts to help us all interact even more closely. Starting with weekly broadcast office-hours on Hangouts On Air to answer Android development questions. These will happen every Wednesday at 2pm Pacific Time (10pm UTS) in Mountain View—expect to see these hangouts in more time zones as our teams in London, Sydney, and Tokyo get involved. Each hangout will be recorded for YouTube, so if you can’t join us live you won’t miss out.

It turns out that hangouts are a lot of fun, so we’ll be doing more of these that feature interviews with Google engineers and 3rd party Android app developers willing to share their tips and experiences.

We’re looking forward to interacting with you even more closely, so add us to your circles, join the conversation by commenting on posts, and join the hangouts. We can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Find: BAOC Countdown and WPAppItUp Wrap-Up

Too late now really, but maybe next year?

Windows Phone Developer Blog

Big App on Campus: Two Weeks Left!

Back in November, we announced a developer promotion for US students called “Big App on Campus.” There are exactly 18 days left to enter. Though we think it’s a no brainer, some of you have asked “Why should I enter?” Let’s recap:

1. For the experience of a lifetime -> 10 finalists, along with one of their friends, will win a trip to SxSW in March. If selected as a finalist, you and your friend will get to come hang out with The Gracious Few (featuring members of the bands LIVE and Candlebox) and attend a rocking concert.

2. $30k in prize money -> the top paid app and the top free app will each win $15,000!

3. Serious bragging rights -> finalist apps will be featured on our Facebook page and the developers behind these creations will have some crazy stories to tell about their time in Austin at SxSW.

Find: Windows Phone 'Tango' could support over three times as many languages, native code coming?

Next windows phone version will leverage nokias global reach. Smart. 

Also, native gaming support. 

The Verge - All Posts
Windows Phone Marketplace

It's widely understood that the next major release of Windows Phone — codenamed Tango — will significantly expand the platform's support for internationalization, in part by driving the hardware requirements downmarket. Another key aspect of that will be expanding language support. That already happened to a degree in 7.5 Mango, but it currently stands at just 35 languages — good enough to match iOS, but not good enough for a company like Nokia that has market presence in virtually every country in the world. New rumors out of a developer event in India pegs Tango at some 120 languages, well over three times as many as Mango's total count and likely enough to blanket the majority of the globe in (likely lower end) Windows Phone...

Find: Rethinking iPhone UI and getting things done with Clear to-do app

More on the todo app our student Michael told us about, with the cool ui. Turns out the designer involved works at iconfactory in Greensboro. 

Ars Technica

If managing your to-do lists is taking up more time and effort than you spend actually getting things done, a new iPhone app coming from developer Phill Ryu, designer David Lanham, and publisher Realmac Software might be the perfect solution. Tossing most iPhone UI conventions out the window along with any religious adherence to GTD principles, the upcoming Clear app is designed to eliminate the friction and complexity of adhering to systems like GTD and be as easy to use as a paper list. We were able to meet up with the team at the 2012 Macworld|iWorld to check out the offerings.

Clear has no standard navigation bar at the top or tab bar at the bottom—common iPhone UI elements. Instead, the app is stripped down to the bare minimum, with a rectangular strip for each list item. Pull the list down from the top to add another item. Swipe right to mark the item completed. Swipe left to delete the item from your list. Pinch to access a list of lists—you could keep a shopping list, a list of errands, and a list of projects, for example.

Find: In India, Google Leads the Smartphone App Race

Google doing well in mobile india, except with social. 

Nielsen Wire

A major contributor to the fast-changing nature of smartphones in India is the explosion of Google’s Android onto the scene. The tremendous growth of Android since entering India last year has it taking the leadership position in terms of shipments last quarter. A Nielsen Informate panel found smartphone users in India spending more than 40 percent of total active time on their smartphones on data-centric activities. A full 25 percent of users’ time with apps is spent on those developed by Google, with the Android Market, YouTube and Gmail leading the way.

in-share-of-apps

Google has the #1 app in terms of reach for 5 out of top 7 genres, while Facebook dominates social networking

Find: Really Neat New Way for a Task Manager

Hey folks,

Nice find from student Michael Lee -- very natural use of gesture in this todo app.

***

Saw this pop up on twitter today. It's a task manager that is being released in February that's purely gesture based on iOS

Michael


Ten Unusual Shapes For Mobile Phones » Yanko Design

Media_httpwwwyankodes_ajhxd

From student Dan Perjar.

Go Viral to Improve Health - Institute of Medicine

Media_httpwwwiomeduac_fgiwc
via iom.edu
A contest to develop a health related mobile app, registration deadline February 10, app submission deadline March 28.
You need to involve a student in health, and use a certain data source.
Winner gets several thousand dollars.

Find: Marko Ahtisaari joins Nokia's Leadership Team

Seems a good move. 

The Verge - All Posts
via press.nokia.com

Nokia's chief designer Marko Ahtisaari has been promoted today, stepping up from his former position as Senior VP of Design, to a place on Nokia's Leadership Team and the new title of Executive Vice President, Design. Ahtisaari is behind the look and feel of the Lumia range, including the print-color inspired polycarbonate bodies of the Lumia 800 and 900, and the swipe interface of MeeGo that's one of the stand-out features of the N9. Despite the new title, he will continue to lead the design team in the creation of new products.

We had a chance to speak with Ahtisaari at Nokia World in October last year, and it's clear that his vision for Nokia is shared by the company as a whole. CEO Stephen Elop said of the promotion, "By appointing...

Find: Eee Pad Transformer Prime with ICS: a preview of Android 4.0 on a tablet

iPads top competition. Needs lots more apps. 

The Verge - All Posts
Gallery Photo: Eee Pad Transformer Prime ICS update photos

When Asus' Transformer Prime hit the market in early December, it was undoubtedly the best tablet hardware on the market. I said as much in my original review: it had a brand new quad-core Tegra 3 processor, the new 8-megapixel camera took impressive stills and video, and the keyboard dock, like the original Transformer's, continued to add an entirely different dimension to the tablet experience. However, it was the software — Android 3.2 aka Honeycomb — which held the tablet back. Not only was the browser performance slower than it should have been, but Honeycomb itself lacked the fit and finish to match Asus' great hardware. Google's Ice Cream Sandwich update is supposed to solve all that, and just last week Asus rolled out the...

Find: Google reminds Android developers that the Menu button is going away

No hard menu button anymore in ics. 

The Verge - All Posts
Android 4.0 Holo Theme 720

In a new post on its Android Developers Blog today, Google is giving devs tips on how to better prepare their apps for a brave, Menu button-less future. Honeycomb started the revolution by introducing the so-called "action bar" at the tops of applications and by killing physical buttons in favor of soft, reconfigurable ones, but that was strictly a tablet affair — the impetus to get developers on board with the Menu button's demise is greater now that Ice Cream Sandwich is out and in the process of bringing those same UX paradigm shifts to phones.

As it stands, Android 4.0 bridges the gap with older apps by posting an "action overflow button" — three vertical dots — to the right side of the soft button bar at the bottom of the...

Find: Apple's Tim Cook expresses 'outrage' over NYT report on worker safety

Apple is listening to nyt's criticism of its supply chain. it should. 

The Verge - All Posts
Apple Factory

Yesterday, The New York Times published a comprehensive report including quotes from former and current Apple executives, alleging that Apple pushes its Chinese suppliers to cut corners at the expense of worker safety. Apple has a strong formal stance on supplier responsibility, and the NYT report doesn't dispute that, but suggested that despite Apple's regular audits, the company doesn't protect the labor force when it would interfere with profit.

Now, an internal email from Apple CEO Tim Cook has leaked to 9to5 Mac, partially disputing the NYT report.

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We...

Find: RIM CEO: BlackBerry is a differentiated product, Android OEMs 'are all the same'

Rim doesn't plan to join another ecosystem. 

The Verge - All Posts
RIM BlackBerry_640

In an interview with CrackBerry, RIM's new CEO Thorsten Heins has clarified his recent comments about the company's strategy for the near future. One of the major quotes from Thorsten's first comments after becoming CEO was that RIM doesn't need drastic change, which many have interpreted to mean he'll keep the same course as already set by his predecessors, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. That was our reading of the matter, too, but Thorsten explains that what he meant was that he doesn't believe RIM needs to split up into smaller parts or be purchased by another company to be successful. Such "seismic" change isn't on the cards, as far as he's concerned, but there's "a lot of structural change" already ongoing, including the move to...

Find: Siri isn't ruining your cellphone service

So it's not siri clogging the pipes, it's pixels & pop. 

The Verge - All Posts
Siri settings

The Washington Post's Peter Farhi posted an opinion piece this week entitled "How Siri is ruining your cellphone service," in which he says that Apple's voice-powered assistant — a staple of the iPhone 4S, and presumably every iDevice going forward — is a "bandwidth guzzler" that's "flooding" our mobile networks with unprecedented data utilization, a trend that will ultimately saturate available spectrum. We should "prepare for higher cellphone bills," he says, or — perhaps looking to rile the defenders of net neutrality — "we could put some traffic cops on the beat to regulate our data demands and limit the traffic snarls and bottlenecks."

GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham does an excellent job of debunking the piece, noting that...

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Find: AT&T: iPhone made up 80% of smartphones, 66% of all phones sold last quarter

AT&T us sold 20% of all iPhones on planet last qtr. global feature phone sales began declining six mos ago. 

Ars Technica

AT&T sold 9.4 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011, but 7.6 million of which were iPhones, the company reported today. According to those numbers, the iPhone made up a whopping 80 percent of AT&T's smartphone sales for the quarter, and 66 percent of all postpaid phones sold through AT&T. 

These numbers place AT&T as the biggest iPhone retailer, besting Verizon's 4.2 million iPhone activations and constituting over 20 percent of Apple's 37 million sales worldwide last quarter.

The proportion of smartphone sales is surprising, given that worldwide sales of feature phones began to decline only six months ago after growing for two consecutive years. The big quarter for iPhones on AT&T can largely be attributed to the launch of the iPhone 4S, which also helped iOS even up the score with Android in its percentage of sales to recent smartphone acquirers.

Find: Palms Down: Mobile Hardware Guru Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP

Oh webos, we hardly knew ye. 

Wired Epicenter

Rubinstein at the WebOS launch event in 2011. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

HP’s mobile era is over.

Jon Rubinstein, the HP executive to lead the charge against Apple’s iPad devices, has left the company as of Friday morning.

A company spokesman confirmed to Wired in an interview that the mobile hardware guru, once a star at Palm when that company was still a contender, was no longer with Hewlett-Packard.

Find: Steam launches Android and iOS app for free, in beta

Probably no mobile iOS gma on steam though. 

Joystick
Valve today announced and launched Steam applications for both iOS and Android platforms. The app, dubbed "Steam Mobile," allows users to chat, read a limited selection of syndicated gaming news (might we also suggest another mobile app for that?), browse groups and profiles, and purchase games while on the go. Like many Valve products before it, the App is launching in limited beta, with only invitees currently able to log in. Snagging the App and attempting to sign in lets Valve know that you're interested, and select folks will then receive an invite should they be chosen.

Company president and co-founder Gabe Newell said the app comes at the request of many fans over the years -- it marks Valve's first foray into the mobile space. "Mobile is changing the way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone," Newell said.

No news is given regarding the potential for iOS or Android game selling through the Steam mobile portal, but it seems unlikely -- at least on Apple devices -- given various terms of service restrictions regarding competition with the official application stores. Both the Android and iOS versions are available as of right now.

Find: Nintendo: 3DS sales prove there's still room for dedicated gaming handhelds

3ds recovery

Joystiq
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata believes the company has proven that there's still a market for dedicated gaming handheld hardware like the 3DS. In a briefing -- which covered a lot of ground -- Iwata revealed the pictured chart above, comparing internal Nintendo weekly sales data of the Wii, DS and 3DS. The executive said that the initial sales pace of the 3DS was "unsatisfactory," but the device gained momentum after the price cut and the launch of popular titles like Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 (and Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G in Japan).

"Last summer, when the sales pace of the Nintendo 3DS was slow, there were extreme remarks saying, 'With the penetration of smartphones, will there still be a market for handheld hardware?,' which was almost equal to 'Handheld hardware is not necessary anymore,'" Iwata remarked. "I believe we proved that such opinions are incorrect."

In the end, however, Nintendo did not reach its internal sales goal for the device, despite the 3DS gaining momentum and ending the year with a respectable 15 million unit sales. Iwata says the company could not cover the lack of units sold pre-price drop, which is one of the reasons for its negatively revised financial forecasts.

Find: Lytro's light field camera technology could supercharge future iPhones

Lytro is a new camera that can refocus AFTER images are made. By itself it's already awesome, with iPhone it could be amazing. 

Ars Technica

According to Walter Issacson's authorized biography about former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, one of the things Jobs wanted to "revolutionize" was photography. Jobs believed the iPhone was a vehicle for doing so, but current imaging technologies limit the photographic abilities of smartphones. As detailed in a new book by Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, Inside Apple, Jobs may have found the solution he was looking for in a radical imaging technology from Lytro. To that end, Jobs apparently met with Lytro CEO Ren Ng in June 2011 to discuss how Apple might integrate Lytro's light field technology into its products.

One aspect of the iPhone that has received constant improvements over the years is its included camera. The original iPhone had a fixed focus lens and a 2MP sensor, while the iPhone 3G was upgraded with autofocus capabilities and 3MP. The iPhone 4 moved up to 5MP and added an LED flash and 720p video. The iPhone 4S went even further, moving up to 8MP, improving low-light capture, and moving to full 1080p HD.

Guest: Adriana A de Sousa e Silva

Next Wednesday February 1, we'll be visited by my colleague Adriana A de Sousa e Silva and her students for a joint brainstorming session. Adriana teaches over in the Department of Communication, and the students with her will be from her Mobile Technologies and Cultures/Social Practices classes.

Later in the semester, we'll also visit her class, and exchange lectures.

Opp: Android Camp applications available for students in the US and Canada

Google Student Blog
At Google, we are committed to helping the innovators of the future make the most of their gifts. We also believe open source development is a very useful and accessible way for passionate students to get involved with Computer Science in a practical and rewarding manner.

2011 Android Campers

With this in mind, Google is excited to launch the Android Camp 2012 program! Up to 30 current freshmen students will be selected to attend the all-expense-paid Android Camp at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, from July 22 - July 28, 2012. The Android Camp will include interactive and collaborative curriculum focusing on a practical introduction to developing applications for Android and will explore the concepts behind Android, the framework for constructing an application, and the tools for developing, testing, and publishing software for the platform. Students will also get the opportunity to enjoy technical talks by Googlers, and social activities around the Bay Area.

Where can I apply? Visit google.com/students/androidcamp to learn more about the program and apply before the March 11, 2011 deadline.

When is Android Camp? Android Camp will begin on Sunday, July 22nd and will run until Saturday, July 28th.

I want to know more! To learn more about Android Camp and to submit your application, please visit our website at google.com/students/androidcamp. You can also read about last year's Android Camp here.

Posted by Andrew Neginskiy, University Programs Specialist

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Find: Unlimited data is dead, so let's fight a smarter fight

Editorial on carrier policy. Good ideas. 

The Verge - All Posts
AT&T $50 5GB plan

For the smartphone-heavy United States, the notion of unlimited wireless data is dead, kaput, finis. It's not coming back. Many other parts of the world are in the same boat, and those that aren't will eventually get there. Usable spectrum is a precious, limited resource that can't be extended, and spectral efficiencies introduced by newer technologies like LTE and LTE-Advanced will only take us so far. Some carriers — notably AT&T — have been aggressively deploying additional capacity in urban areas to the point of maxing out. This is where capitalism comes into play: one by one, all-you-can-eat data plans have been replaced by data buckets of varying sizes. Outrageous per-kilobyte overage charges (from legacy limited plans), a...

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Find: Pew: 19 percent of American adults now own a tablet, twice as many as in December

One of five us adults have tablets. Wow. That basically means one of five have iPads. 
The Verge - All Posts
david cameron's breakfast
Just in case you needed data to back up your assertion that tablets are exploding in popularity, the Pew Research Center has revealed its latest polling figures, suggesting that 19 percent of grown-up Americans now own a slate of some sort. More notably, there was apparently a lull in tablet ownership growth over the latter half of 2011, which now appears to have been a case of buyers waiting for the holidays before putting up the cash. A mid-December telephone poll showed 10 percent of US adults owned a tablet, with the subsequent spurt in ownership numbers ostensibly being down to a great deal of tablet gift giving.
Pew also reports an identical trend for ebook readers. Those were at 10 percent before all the presents were unpacked and...
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Find: RIM's new CEO: who is Thorsten Heins?

He doesn't inspire much confidence. 

The Verge - All Posts
Thorsten Heins RIM_1020

As RIM announced last night, the company is hoping to stem its precipitous decline with a change of leadership, appointing former Chief Operating Officer Thorsten Gerhard Heins to the position of CEO. Heins, who joined RIM the same year Apple released the first major BlackBerry competitor, has said he is "excited" to take charge of the company. But what has Heins done so far, and how might his background shape RIM's future?

The RIM executives have never been particularly public figures, and Heins is no exception. Besides a minimal profile on LinkedIn and the RIM site, he has little online presence — no public-facing Facebook page or Twitter feed. Heins himself is a fairly new addition to RIM, and in fact spent most of his career at...

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Find: AT&T and T-Mobile apply to FCC for approval of $1 billion spectrum transfer

Postscript accomplished. But still, where to tmobile?

The Verge - All Posts
T-Mobile UK

According to The Wall Street Journal, AT&T and T-Mobile have entered an application to the FCC to approve the transfer of $1 billion worth of AWS spectrum to the number-four US wireless carrier. The transfer should tie up the remaining loose ends following AT&T's bid to purchase T-Mobile, which was called off in mid-December. In addition to the spectrum, AT&T agreed to give up $3 billion in cash and a seven-year 3G roaming agreement as part of the break-up fee. While we're sure T-Mobile is happy with the extra $4 billion, the company has said that "there's no Plan B. We're back at the starting point."

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Competition: Data Journalism Awards now accepting submissions

A competition in news oriented visualization and apps. 
Google
Last November, we announced our support for a new Data Journalism competition, organized by the Global Editors Network. The competition is now open to submissions and today we hosted an event at our offices in London to share details on how to compete and win a total of six prizes worth EUR 45,000. The European Journalism Centre is running the contest and Google is sponsoring.
Journalism is going through an exciting—if sometimes wrenching—transition from off to online. Google is keen to help. We see exciting possibilities of leveraging data to produce award-winning journalism. “Data journalism is a new, exciting part of the media industry, with at present only a small number of practitioners,” said Peter Barron, Google’s Director of External Relations. “We hope to see the number grow.”
In data journalism, reporters leverage numerical data and databases to gather, organize and produce news. Bertrand Pecquerie, the Global Editor Network’s CEO, believes the use of data will, in particular, revolutionize investigative reporting. “We are convinced that there is a bright future for journalism,” he said at the London event. “This is not just about developing new hardware like tablets. It is above all about producing exciting new content.”
The European Journalism Centre, a non-profit based in Maastricht, has been running data training workshops for several years. It is producing the Data Journalism Awards website and administering the prize. “This new initiative should help convince editors around the world that data journalism is not a crazy idea, but a viable part of the industry,” says Wilfried Ruetten, Director of the center.
Projects should be submitted to http://www.datajournalismawards.org. The deadline is April 10, 2012. Entries should have been published or aired between April 11, 2011 and April 10, 2012. Media companies, non-profit organisations, freelancers and individuals are eligible.
Submissions are welcomed in three categories: data-driven investigative journalism, data-driven applications and data visualisation and storytelling. National and international projects will be judged separately from local and regional ones. “We wanted to encourage not only the New York Times’s of the world to participate, but media outlets of all sizes,” says Pecquerie. “Journalism students are also invited to enter, provided their work has been published.”

An all-star jury has been assembled of journalists from prestigious international media companies including the New York Times, the Guardian and Les Echos. Paul Steiger, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica, will serve as president.
Winners will be announced at the Global News Network’s World Summit in Paris on May 31, 2011.
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations

Find: Sony adds Glonass positioning to numerous Xperia phones, cites accuracy benefits

Glonass is Russia's gps system. Using both improves accuracy. 

The Verge - All Posts
xperia

Sony is the latest smartphone manufacturer to sing the praises of Russia's Glonass positioning system, announcing that the technology will see implementation in its upcoming Xperia S and Xperia Ion Android handsets. It turns out this isn't exactly new territory for the company, as a post on its Developer World blog reveals that Glonass is already built-in to select existing devices — specifically those powered by Qualcomm's S2 / S3 chipsets. This brings Sony on par with competitors including Motorola and Apple, which have also integrated Glonass-ready hardware into products like the Droid RAZR and iPhone 4S.

As for the reasons behind embracing Glonass, Sony Ericsson Positioning Specialist Magnus Persson says it's all about improving...

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Find: RIM: Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to step down, COO Thorsten Heins to become CEO

Finally, rim shows the world that it knows change is needed. 

The Verge - All Posts
thorsten heins

It looks like the shake up everybody has been expecting at RIM has finally come to pass. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis will each step down from their co-CEO positions amid growing turmoil in the company and fears it won't be able to rebound itself in time. They will be replaced by one of RIM's two COOs, Thorsten Heins, according to the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, another board member, Barbara Stymiest, will replace them as chairwoman of RIM's board. Lazaridis will become the vice chairman on the board and Balsillie will also remain on the board, but "without any "operational role," according to Bloomberg. Both will retain significant shares in the company.

Jim Balsillie denied that the move was in response to the intense...

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Find: MIT brings Google App Inventor back from the dead as open-source project

Nice. Not for serious devs, but a nice way to get your feet wet. 

The Verge - All Posts
Android App Inventor

Google App Inventor, the simplified Android app creation tool that went dark last year, is getting a new lease on life as an open-source project at MIT. The App Inventor source code was released by Google and MIT yesterday as part of a three-month project to create a full-fledged App Inventor server for public use. Eventually, MIT will be adding documentation and accepting contributions to the code, but for now a basic repository is available here. Users who download the tool are free to modify and redistribute it, as with any open-source software.

MIT's project is part of the Center for Mobile Learning, which announced several months ago that it would be taking over App Inventor when Google shut down the service on December 31, 2011. As...

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Find: App Store Economics

On the dangers of in app purchases and ads. What if the product is not the app?

Daring Fireball

David Barnard:

Ultimately, the users become the product, not the app. Selling users to advertisers and pushing in-app upgrades/consumables is a completely different game than carefully crafting apps to maximize user value/entertainment. It’d be a shame if the mobile software industry devolved into some horrific hybrid of Zynga and Facebook.

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Find: Heating Up

... Apparently means market share has now reached 94 to 6. iPad dominance continues. 

Daring Fireball

Todd Haselton, BGR:

While the iPad’s lead in the tablet market is obvious, it’s becoming more clear there’s strong competition for market share below it. The Amazon Kindle Fire represented an average of 2.4 ad impressions on Chitikas network for every 100 iPad impressions, but RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook wasn’t far behind; it viewed an average of 1.8 ad impressions for every 100 iPad impressions on Chitika’s mobile ad network. That’s followed closely by the Samsung Galaxy with 1.6 ad impressions and the Motorola XOOM with 1.55 add impressions.

Impressions per hundred iPad impressions? What a great metric for the “non-iPad tablet” category.

DF reader Andrew Wood re-did BGR’s graph to include the iPad. Hot competition indeed.

Update: Here’s another graph that includes the iPad, by Greg Scown.

Find: More US Consumers Choosing Smartphones as Apple Closes the Gap on Android

Android has half of us market. Last qtr, with ios, they make up 80%. 

Nielsen Wire

According to the latest research from Nielsen, the high-profile launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S in the Fall had an enormous impact on the proportion of smartphone owners who chose an Apple iPhone. Among recent acquirers, meaning those who said they got a new device within the past three months, 44.5 percent of those surveyed in December said they chose an iPhone, compared to just 25.1 percent in October. Furthermore, 57 percent of new iPhone owners surveyed in December said they got an iPhone 4S.

Android continues to hold the lead among all smartphone users, with 46.3 percent of all smartphone owners surveyed in Q42011 reporting they have an Android-based mobile phone.

As of Q42011, 46 percent of US mobile consumers had smartphones, and that figure is growing quickly. In fact, 60 percent of those who said they got a new device within the last three months chose a smartphone over a feature phone.

smartphone-os-share

smartphone-penetration


Find: ★ On the Proprietary Nature of the iBooks Author File Format

iBooks has proprietary extensions to epub3. Good discussion here of pros cons. 

Daring Fireball

Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the W3C CSS Working Group, has a detailed technical analysis of the iBooks Author file format:

The iba format clearly extends CSS (and therefore EPUB3) to offer the following features:

  1. Template-based layout including special areas (gutter)
  2. Extended underlining
  3. Ability to control the size of each column and column gap in a multi-column layout
  4. Something equivalent to Adobe’s Regions and Exclusions.


#more 

He thinks these nonstandard extensions are a strategic mistake on Apple’s part:

When a piece of software is so well designed from a UI point of view and could become such an attractor in terms of usage, I feel this is a totally wrong strategy. Opening up everything and using only carefully chosen standards and matching the version of WebKit used by Safari would have given an immense and almost unbeatable competitive advantage to Apple, would have attracted even more people to the Mac platform and would have turned the iBooks Store into the primary online choice of publication for all new books.

It should surprise no one that the co-chair of a W3C working group deems standards compliance to be more important than does Apple. And he may well be right that it will prove to be a strategic mistake. But it’s worth noting that the e-book market leader, Amazon’s Kindle, uses a proprietary format. Eschewing ePub and any sort of standards compliance doesn’t seem to have hurt Amazon. And, up until yesterday, the only e-book format supported by iBooks has been standards compliant ePub, and that hasn’t made Apple the market leader. It’s a small sample size and we’re early in the game, but the evidence to date suggests the opposite of what Glazman is arguing. Kindle, with its proprietary file formats, is more popular than iBooks, which has been based on ePub.

Nor is Apple claiming this new format is ePub. They haven’t asserted proprietary new features or syntax for ePub the way, say, Netscape and Internet Explorer asserted proprietary new tags and features for HTML. The output of iBooks Author is no more intended to be an industry standard than are any other Apple-proprietary document formats — Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc. This is Apple’s own e-book format, intended only to be displayed (played?) using Apple’s own software running on Apple’s own devices.

As with the end-user licensing kerfuffle, it’s worth noting that the app’s name is iBooks Author, not eBooks Author. Just because there’s demand for an open-standards-based e-book production and layout tool of the scope and caliber of iBooks Author, doesn’t mean Apple has any interest in making such a tool.

Starting with full conformance with EPUB3 and pushing for a fast update of EPUB3 or release of EPUB4 including all new CSS cool kids was a much better, and much more secure way of doing things.

But if Apple had taken this route, the books generated by iBooks Author today wouldn’t have any of the layout features Glazman cited above. The iBooks format isn’t different just for the sake of being different, it’s different for the sake of being better — not better in the future, after a W3C review period and approval, but better today, in the textbooks you can download and read in iBooks right now.

It’s the difference between “What’s the best we can do within the constraints of the current ePub spec?” versus “What’s the best we can do given the constraints of our engineering talent?” — the difference between going as fast as the W3C standards body permits versus going as fast as Apple is capable.

Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.

In some sense this is like a rehash of the App Store debate — iBooks Author is a developer tool for the iBooks platform. As I’ve said regarding the App Store, Apple’s priorities are as follows: Apple’s best interests first, users’ second, developers’ third. In this case the developers are the producers of commercial e-books, who must now choose between (a) going iBooks-exclusive; (b) figuring out a way to work iBooks Author into a cross-platform production workflow; or (c) eschewing iBooks Author entirely and using whatever other tools are out there, missing out on all the new iBooks-exclusive layout and design features.

If they go iBooks-exclusive, you can see how Apple would love that.

If they choose to work iBooks Author into their cross-platform production workflow, and it proves to be a pain in the ass, that’s not Apple’s problem.

If they eschew the use of iBooks Author altogether and suffer using worse-designed and less-capable tools, that’s not Apple’s problem. And if the book they produce based on these lesser tools and technologies doesn’t sell as well because it doesn’t offer the attractive and fun layout and design features available using iBooks Author, that’s not Apple’s problem either.

(What would be Apple’s problem is if iBooks’s new layout and design features do not prove to be a competitive advantage in the e-book market. But even then, Apple would merely be right back where they were prior to yesterday’s announcements.1)

Glazman looks at these new iBooks books and sees a nonstandard proprietary format. Apple looks at these new iBooks and sees layouts and design features that no other e-book platform offers today. One man’s nonstandard is another man’s competitive differentiation.

iBooks still offers full support for the open standard ePub format. So as a loose analogy, I see ePub being as to the new iBooks format as mobile web apps are to native iOS App Store apps — one is an open industry standard fully supported by Apple, the other a closed proprietary platform with superior creation tools and end-user experience, which if you want to use, you must use on Apple’s terms.


  1. Another possible problem for Apple resulting from its decision to restrict iBooks author as a tool only for the iBooks platform: resentment from publishers and authors who see this restriction as spiteful and greedy, not as strategic or competitive. Again though, that’s just a replay of the risks Apple took with its restrictive App Store policies. 

Sent with Reeder

Spotted: Detection of Mobile Malware in the Wild

Looks like a nice intro to mobile security. 
IEEE Computer
Smartphones have become an essential part of human life and its usage has grown exponentially in the past few years. The growth of smartphone usage can be directly linked to its ability to support third-party applications that are offered through online application markets. Due to its worldwide adoption and widespread popularity, the mobile malware attacks also growing at an alarming rate (http://bit.ly/sbtujI). Malware authors make use of third-party applications to inject malicious content into smartphones and thus compromise phone’s security. In response, mobile security research has become critical and focused on protecting smartphones from malware attacks and other security threats. In this paper, we present a survey of techniques that are used to detect mobile malware in the wild and discuss the limitations of current techniques and provide some tips to protect smartphones from potential security threats.

Spotted: Proton: Multitouch Gestures as Regular Expressions


An interesting looking paper on a systematic tool for gesture recognition. 
Agrawala papers

Kenrick Kin, Björn Hartmann, Tony DeRose, Maneesh Agrawala

Abstract

Current multitouch frameworks require application developers to write recognition code for custom gestures; this code is split across multiple event-handling callbacks. As the number of custom gestures grows it becomes increasingly difficult to 1) know if new gestures will conflict with existing gestures, and 2) know how to extend existing code to reliably recognize the complete gesture set. Proton is a novel framework that addresses both of these problems. Using Proton, the application developer declaratively specifies each gesture as a regular expression over a stream of touch events. Proton statically analyzes the set of gestures to report conflicts, and it automatically creates gesture recognizers for the entire set. To simplify the creation of complex multitouch gestures, Proton introduces gesture tablature, a graphical notation that concisely describes the sequencing of multiple interleaved touch actions over time. Proton contributes a graphical editor for authoring tablatures and automatically compiles tablatures into regular expressions. We present the architecture and implementation of Proton, along with three proof-of-concept applications. These applications demonstrate the expressiveness of the framework and show how Proton simplifies gesture definition and conflict resolution.
Proton represents a gesture as a regular expression describing a sequence of touch events. Using Proton’s gesture tablature, developers can design a multitouch gesture graphically by arranging touch sequences on horizontal tracks. Proton converts the tablature into a regular expression. When Proton matches the expression with the touch event stream, it invokes callbacks associated with the expression.

Research Paper

PDF (2.6M)

Video

MP4 (20.5M)
Proton: Multitouch Gestures as Regular Expressions
ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2012.

Find: The rise and fall of personal computing

Good sense of perspective. The ground is shifting. 

asymco

Thanks to Jeremy Reimer I was able to create the following view into the history of computer platforms.

I  added data from the smartphone industry, Apple and updated the PC industry figures with those from Gartner. Note the log scale.

The same information is available as an animation in the following video (Music by Nora Tagle):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h-C6u4yLj4

This data combines several “categories” of products and is not complete in that not all mobile phone platforms are represented. However, the zooming out  offers several possible observations into the state of the “personal computing” world as of today.

  1. We cannot consider the iPad as a “niche”. The absolute volume of units sold after less than two years is enough to place it within an order of magnitude of all PCs sold. We can also observe that it has a higher trajectory than the iPhone which became a disruptive force in itself. Compare these challengers to NeXT in 1991.
  2. The “entrants” into personal computing, the iPad, iPhone and Android, have a combined volume that is higher than the PCs sold in the same period (358 million estimated iOS+Android vs. 336 million PCs excluding Macs in 2011.) The growth rate and the scale itself combine to make the entrants impossible to ignore.
  3. There is a distinct grouping of platform options into three phases or eras. The first lasting from 1975 to 1991 was an era of rapid growth but also of multiple standards and experiments. It was typical of an industry in emergence. The personalization of computing brought about a new set of entrants. The second phase lasted between 1991 and 2007 and was characterized by a near monopoly of Microsoft, but, crucially one alternative platform did survive. The third phase can be seen as starting five years ago with the emergence of the iPhone and its derivatives. It has similarities to the first phase.

We can also look at the data through a slightly different view: market share. Share is a bit more subjective because we need to combine products in ways that are considered comparable (or competing).

First, this is a “traditionalist” view of the PC market as defined by Gartner and IDC, and excluding tablets and smartphones.

This view would imply that the PC market is not changing in any substantial way. Although the Mac platform is gaining share, there is no significant erosion in the power of the incumbent.

Second, is a view where the iPad is added to the traditionalist view.

This view is more alarming. Given the first chart, in order for the iPad to be significant, it would need to be “visible” for a market that already ships over 350 million units. And there it is. If counted, the iPad begins to show the first disruption in the status quo since 1991.

The third view is with the addition of iPhone and Android.

This last view corresponds to the data in the first graph (line chart). If iOS and Android are added as potential substitutions for personal computing, the share of PCs suddenly collapses to less than 50%. It also suggests much more collapse to come.

I will concede that this last view is extremist. It does not reflect a competition that exists in real life. However, I put this data together to show a historic pattern. Sometimes extremism is a better point of view than conservatism. Ignoring this view is very harmful as these not-good-enough computers will surely get better. A competitor that has no strategy to deal with this shift is likely to suffer the fate of those companies in the left side of the chart. Treating the first share chart as reality is surely much more dangerous than contemplating the third.

I’ve used anecdotes in the past to tell the story of the disruptive shift in the fortunes of computing incumbents and entrants. I’ve also shown how the entry of smart devices has disrupted the telecom world and caused a transfer of wealth away from the old guard.

The data shown here frames these anecdotes. The data is not the whole story but it solidifies what should be an intuition.

I’ve also prepared a video showing the platforms

Find: MIPS Technologies Targets Mobile Push

Finally, direct competition for arm?
AnandTech
There are a number of IP vendors in the SoC processor space. ARM, MIPS and PowerPC are the most popular. Each vendor holds the edge in a particular area. For example, PowerPC has a big market share in the high end communication market, thanks to its licensees ((Freescale, AMCC etc.). MIPS, on the other hand, has been maintaining its stronghold in the Set Top Box (STB) market thanks to designs from companies like Broadcom and Sigma Designs. ARM needs no introduction, thanks to the popularity they enjoy because of the mobile revolution. If you pick up a smartphone or a tablet, there is a very high probability that it is powered by an ARM core.
With the mobile revolution threatening to subsume multiple consumer markets in its convergence push, it is now essential for almost every vendor to have a mobile strategy. Not only do SoC vendors have to adapt themselves, the processor IP vendors also need to make the required push. Over the last two years, MIPS has been very vocal about getting into the mobile market. Of course, actions speak louder than words, and we stopped by MIPS's CES suite to see what they had on offer.

Find: Samsung Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich Review ((tags: finds, google, ics, samsung)

Very in depth review. Verdict: phone and ics are quite nice. Nice comparisons of nexus one, s, and galaxy nexus; we use first two in class. 

AnandTech

The evolution of Google’s Nexus line is an interesting one. Each year, Google chooses both a silicon partner and an OEM to make a unique hardware archetype which it caters a specific build of Android to. We've been playing with the latest Nexus - Android 4.0 on both the GSM/UMTS and CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus - for a while now and have put together a comprehensive review of all three. First, our thoughts on Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 4.0, and after that, a review of both devices. 

Read on for the full review. 

Find: How to Customize Your iPhone, Inside and Out

Nice survey of what people would do with their phones if they could. And do since they can. 

Lifehacker

How to Customize Your iPhone, Inside and OutThe iPhone is a beautiful device on its own, but with hundreds of millions of iPhones sold it's not particularly unique. Whether you employ a few simply tricks or more complicated alterations, it's easy to put your own custom stamp on your ordinary device. Here's how you can design custom cases, themes, icons, and more to change your iPhone both inside and out.

Our phones have become our go-to devices for both work and play, but they don't always look and operate the way we like. Whether you want to change your iPhone's appearance, enhance its functionality, or both, you have plenty of options. In this post we'll be looking at customization methods for both your iPhone's software and hardware (hence, "inside and out"). As a result, we've broken it up into two sections. "The Inside" section contains information on how to change icons, create custom and specialized wallpapers, and theme your device. "The Outside" section will help you make custom cases, skins, and alter the actual materials that make up your iPhone. Read both or just skip to the one you want.

Find: Apple Releases iBooks 2, iTunes U, and iBooks Author for Interactive Textbooks

Here comes change. 

Lifehacker

Apple Releases iBooks 2, iTunes U, and iBooks Author for Interactive TextbooksIn an education focused event in New York today, Apple showed of its new version of iBooks and its new creation tool, iBooks Author.

iBooks 2 has a strong focus on textbook design, layout, and easy glossary searching. The books will focus on visuals in landscape mode and straight text in portrait mode. Like any good textbook, the Apple versions will have Q&A sections, critical thinking questions, and are packed full of images. Also included is a streamlined highlighting system that automatically converts your highlights into study cards. High school textbooks are priced at $14.99 or less. iBooks 2 is available for free as an update to iBooks in the iTunes App Store right now.

To accompany the new bookstore, Apple has a new textbook creation app called iBooks Author. The app tries to make book creation as simple as possible with drag and drop functionality, templates, widgets, and organization tools. It's available as a free download in the Mac App Store right now. In order to preview the books you create you need to update to a new version of iTunes, which is also available now.

Finally, iTunes U is getting an overhaul and an app today. It will allow students to access lectures, notes, and streams directly from an iPad in the same way they would an online class. Once exclusive to universities, it's now available to K-12 schools as well. If universities support it, the app will fully integrate with textbooks in iBooks. iTunes U is available as a free download in the iTunes App Store right now.

Guest: Pat Fitzgerald of Art & Design

Hey folks,

On Monday we'll be visited by Patrick Fitzgerald of Art and Design. He directs the Advanced Media Lab, works with me regularly on mobiles and other projects, and currently has an interactive installation, ID:ENTITY, at Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum.

He'll be talking about design process, as it applies to phones.

Best,

Ben


Lecture: more on devices

Folks,

Next Wednesday (January 25), we'll continue our lecture on mobile devices. Please read the following paper in preparation, from the beginning through the section titled Output:
  • Lewis, James R.; Commarford, Patrick M.; Kennedy, Peter J.; Sadowski, Wallace J. 2008. Handheld Electronic Devices. Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics, 4, 105-148. (ncsu)
Post your reactions on the class forum.

Best,

Ben

Find: Matias Duarte interview: Android Design guidelines announcement

The Verge - All Posts
duarte josh
Google's director of Android user experience Matias Duarte just stopped by The Verge trailer here at CES to make a special announcement, and we've decided to try something new — we're streaming the interview live. We'll be kicking things off in just a moment, and Matias will be taking viewer questions for a while after the announcement.
Update: We've now uploaded our recording of the live interview for you to enjoy below.
Continue reading…

Find: The long road to BlackBerry 10

Interesting, but still sounds like there's more hurt coming at rim. 
The Verge - All Posts
BlackBerry Logo 1020 x 377 booth arched
Last week at CES, RIM unveiled new features and functionality in PlayBook OS 2.0, which is due for a public release in February. Although much more polished than the initial release, we found that it still lacks certain features — including core advantages like BBM — that we would expect to see on a RIM tablet.
Yet the most important feature that PlayBook OS 2.0 lacks is a wide variety of quality apps. To find out how RIM plans to fix that, we sat down with the man tasked with ensuring that the company (re)builds a large developer ecosystem, VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders. In a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion, we not only heard RIM's plan for getting developers enthused for PlayBook, but also got some details on RIM's...
Continue reading…

Find: The Best of CES 2012

Quadhd & very high res tabs (~2500). 
AnandTech

CES is all wrapped up and everyone is back home, and one of the questions I’ve been asked repeatedly by friends and family is, “What was the coolest thing you saw at CES this year?” Now, keep in mind that I am only one person and I didn’t even see a fraction of the show floor, as there were plenty of meetings set up around Vegas, so this is just my perspective on the coolest technology trends at the show. You’ll also notice that there’s a common thread in what really impressed me, but this is a highly subjective topic so take it for what it’s worth: one man’s opinion. What three things impressed me most at CES this year? Read on to find out.

Find: RIM reportedly in talks to sell to Samsung, HTC, others

This must be a humbling experience rim. And a useful one. 

Ars Technica

Research in Motion may be getting shopped around to other tech companies including Samsung or looking to license its OS, according to recent reports. Citing its "trusted sources," Boy Genius Report says that RIM may be looking to sell either some of its divisions or the whole company, though it may be overvaluing what it has to offer.

Find: Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing

About time. Thanks Steve!
Ars Technica

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the "GarageBand for e-books," so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.
Along with the details we were able to gather from our sources, we also spoke to two experts in the field of digital publishing to get a clearer picture of the significance of what Apple is planning to announce.

Find: CES 2012 LTE Face-Off - AT&T versus Verizon Wireless

Not much difference. Remember though AT&T doesn't have much traffic o
AnandTech
My friends often think I've lost my mind given how many times I run speedtests on handsets in the process of reviewing them. The reason I'm compulsive about testing cellular network throughput and conditions is because it's massively important to both the overall smartphone experience - remove the cellular connection, and you've got a very expensive personal media player at best. We've taken a good look at Verizon's 4G LTE a number of times, however we haven't yet given AT&T's LTE the same treatment, though it's coming soon.
We're wrapping up CES 2012 in Las Vegas, and the whole time I've been obsessively running throughput tests using Ookla's speedtest.net application on an HTC Vivid and CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus, two UE Category 3 devices on AT&T and Verizon Wireless LTE, respectively. I thought it worth sharing how AT&T LTE has stacked up next to Verizon Wireless 4G LTE during CES thus far. I've been running tests on both phones at the same time in both the Las Vegas Convention Center and Venetian CES venues in between meetings, as well as up and down The Strip during the convention. This isn't meant to be super scientific, but gives a decently fair gauge for how things have performed thus far.
The results are pretty interesting, and show that AT&T's LTE was slightly faster than Verizon 4G LTE during the show, though the two end up being pretty close at the end of the day. I've done the same statistical breakdown we do for smartphone reviews for the results, and made some color-coded histograms as well. I ended up running just north of 200 tests total, so ~100 per device.

Find: Microsoft now paid royalties on 70% of US Android smartphones

One way to fund a competing os is to collect royalties from your rivals. 

Though interestingly, ms ain't getting any from google, only google's device partners. A flank attack. 

Ars Technica

LG has become the latest in a long line of Android handset vendors to sign a patent licensing agreement with Microsoft. The agreement allows the South Korean conglomerate to use Microsoft patented technology in phones, tablets, and other consumer electronics running both Android and Chrome OS.

This is the eleventh agreement between Microsoft and Android-using OEMs, with other licensees including Samsung, HTC, and Acer. In total, Microsoft says that more than 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the US are covered by a similar patent agreement. The only major manufacturer now without a license agreement is Motorola Mobility.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the form is likely to be comparable to that of the other license agreements, which all involve payment of a royalty to Microsoft for each handset sold.