Stefan Magdalinski is now the front-runner in the “Guy of the Year” award for buying his wife a chocolate-covered iPad for her birthday, which he managed to get sent to South Africa.
Knowing that his beloved, @kerrching, really wanted an iPad for her birthday, Magdalinski reached out to some friends in London who were not only able to get him an iPad (it’s not yet available in South Africa), but were also able to coat it and freeze it in chocolate.
The results, we think, speak for themselves. The iPad is still in perfect condition and the chocolate coating is an extra layer of thoughtful kindness — and sweetness.
Graffiti wasn’t always recognized as an art form, nor were its practitioners recognized as artists. What once began as a criminalized and illicit activity is now gaining traction as an art form, and with that comes the inevitable shift to the virtual realm.
Graffiti artist Phetus recently created a spray can app for the iPad, which went on to garner over a million downloads in less than a month, and hit number one in the “entertainment” category on iTunes in numerous countries.
What is it about graffiti that’s causing a buzz in the virtual realm? Is it safer to do it online? Has it become more acceptable if it isn’t in your face?
Earlier this week, police arrested two men in Arizona for attempting to trade a third generation iPod touch and about seven grams worth of marijuana for a 32G iPad via an ad on Craiglist, a local ABC station reports.
After receiving a tip about the ad, which included photos of both the iPod touch and marijuana (see below), police officers sent an e-mail purporting to be interested in the exchange. When the police met up under the pretense of completing the trade, 20-year-olds Jacob Walker and Jacob Veldare were instead arrested when Walker offered up the marijuana. Both now face charges for possession and the attempted sale of an illegal substance.
Not only were the two unwise enough to post pictures of marijuana on Craiglist, but they were also gullible enough to believe that anyone would trade a 32G iPad, which costs $599 for the Wi-Fi version and $729.00 for the 3G version, for a $299 32G iPod touch and a quarter ounce of marijuana of dubious quality.
According to Reddit’s blog, the site’s official Gmail account – reddit@gmail.com – has been broken into. Luckily, it’s just an account for feedback email, so no user data or confidential information has been compromised. Following the security breach, Reddit has changed the feedback email to reddit@reddit.com.
From the blog: “We’re in contact with both google’s and twitter’s security team, and the site has not been broken into. All he’s done at this point is ruined everyone’s night. We don’t recycle passwords, and we don’t store passwords in the reddit email. No one’s account has been compromised. We don’t store any confidential information in that account; it is just for feedback email.”
Notice the part where it says that Reddit contacted Twitter’s security team? Yup, Reddit’s Twitter account was linked to the Gmail account, and it also got compromised, but Reddit has recovered it and deleted the tweets posted by the hacker(s).
Of course, the story about the breach reached the top of Reddit, as well, and one commenter asks an interesting question: Why does Reddit use a Gmail account for this purpose, anyway? One of the site’s moderators answers: “When we were much, much smaller (no mail server, etc) it was the easiest way for several people to get to the feedback account at the same time, and it stuck.”
So there you have it: as the company grows, it should continually update its security practices, otherwise it might find that certain solutions, that were good enough a couple of years ago, simply don’t cut it anymore.
One of the most exciting announcements from WWDC today was iOS 4, the iPhone’s new operating system.
The OS, which contains around 100 new and upgraded features, will be rolled out with the new iPhone 4 next month, and it will also be available as a free software update on earlier devices, including the iPad, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and second and third generation iPod touch with 32GB or 64GB storage.
In his keynote address, Steve Jobs chose to highlight a select few of the iOS’s new features, including multitasking, iBooks, advertising and file management. But there wasn’t enough time to cover all the upgrades and improvements. Some of iOS 4’s features that slipped under the radar include app gifting, wireless keyboard support and many others.
We first learned about iOS 4 back in April. At that point, we knew multitasking would be coming to the iPhone “in a way that doesn’t hinder performance or battery life.” Today, Jobs confirmed and demonstrated services such as Pandora (Pandora) and navigation running in the background while other apps were also running in the foreground.
Two other hotly anticipated upgrades for iOS 4 are the Mail app’s major facelift and the all-new app organization functionality.
Now, users can organize their iPhone apps into separate folders for better organization and easy access. iOS 4 will be able to manage up to 2160 applications on a device. Folders will feature the familiar drag-and-drop functionality that Apple device users know and love.
Email on the iPhone is also getting a major overhaul in iOS 4. You’ll be able to view messages from all your accounts in a single, integrated inbox. Messages will be threaded, and you’ll be able to open attachments using third-party apps, as well.
Apple made some significant announcements for multimedia functionality, too. iOS 4 will support custom playlist creation for iTunes, tap-to-focus video, 5x zoom for camera functions, and a Photos feature called “Faces and Places,” which allows users to sort and view photos based on where they were taken and who appears in them.
Finally, applications can now be gifted to friends and family, the background wallpaper on your home screen can be easily changed, a spell-checker has been built into Mail and other apps, and Bluetooth (Bluetooth)-enabled wireless keyboards will now play nicely with the operating system.
After recent rumors that Google is internally abandoning Windows and switching to Linux because of security concerns, Microsoft fires back at critics, claiming it’s doing more than its competitors when it comes to security.
“When it comes to security, even hackers admit we’re doing a better job making our products more secure than anyone else. And it’s not just the hackers; third party influentials and industry leaders like Cisco tell us regularly that our focus and investment continues to surpass others,” Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc says in a blog post.
He also lists some facts to support his claim, citing several security improvements in Windows (Windows) 7, like Parental Controls, Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), BitLocker disc encryption and an enhanced Windows Firewall. Furthermore, Microsoft ships software and security updates “as soon as possible through Windows Update and Microsoft Update to keep our customers safe,” he says.
LeBlanc is, however, careful not to say (at least not outright) that Windows 7 is the most secure OS out there. The reason is simple: Microsoft’s Windows operating systems have historically had far more security-related issues than, say, Mac OS.
It all boils down to the old question: Are hackers and malware writers targeting Windows because it’s not secure enough, or because it’s the biggest target out there? It’s a very tough question to answer, and while Microsoft’s attitude towards security has improved tremendously in recent years, critics will continue to use this argument against it. Who would have thought that having a 91% share of the OS market has its downsides?
After two years and multiple iterations, Bing Cashback is being shut down due to a lack of adoption.
Cashback first launched in May 2008 as Live Search CashBack. The program was simple: search for deals using Microsoft’s search engine. Buy products from search results with the coin icon and you received a bit of cash back from your purchase. It gained some traction after it launched, enough that Microsoft brought the program to Bing.
However, Cashback hasn’t picked up in popularity like Microsoft hoped. In a blog post earlier today, the company announced that it is nixing the program:
“In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for.
So we are taking all the learning from the effort and putting it into some new programs for you and our advertisers designed to provide amazing shopping experiences for consumers and great opportunities for advertisers. ”
Bing Cashback will remain operational until July 30th. After that, the program will be shut down, although Cashback users will have a full year to redeem their rewards.
The idea was solid one — offer incentives for searchers to buy through Bing’s (Bing) partners — but it just never picked up steam. As some have pointed out, things could have been different if Microsoft had tried something like group buying, which has become a multi-billion-dollar trend.
As previously announced, the highly anticipated 4G smartphone, HTC EVO 4G, is now available in the U.S. Customers can purchase the device at Sprint retail stores, RadioShack, Best Buy and Walmart, as well as through Sprint.com.
The device costs $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate (taxes excluded).
You can read our hands-on review of the HTC EVO 4G here; in short, it’s a very advanced smartphone with top-of-the-line hardware and capable of 4G data transfer speeds, which is about 10 times faster than current 3G speeds.
To highlight the HTC EVO 4G launch, Sprint today started a major social media campaign, called Sprint Firsts, which encourages users to perform various activities at 4G speeds and let their friends know about it. Participants are being awarded 4G badges, and users who manage to be the “first” will get featured on the EVO homepage.
The new iteration of Yelp’s iPhone app isn’t live just yet, but a company blog post gives a window into what’s coming very soon: badges, and a hierarchy of “royalty” that lets you “rule” venues, neighborhoods, and even cities.
The royalty feature is much akin to Foursquare’s (Foursquare) mayorship feature, and lets Yelp (Yelp) users with the most checkins become the “Duke” or “Duchess” of a particular venue. Yelp goes a step further with the hierarchy, however, offering users with most Dukedoms in a particular neighborhood to be named the “Baron” and even a “King” to be crowned for most Dukedoms in an entire city.
The company itself acknowledges in the blog post that “we’re not the first ones to offer checkins,” but that adding these features “furthers Yelp’s mission of connecting people with and supporting great local businesses.” Yelp also provides some statistics behind why they’re investing in new mobile features: a full 27% of all searches on the review site come from their iPhone app.
Yelp has submitted this 5th major iteration of its app for Apple’s smartphone, which should become available in the App Store (App Store) soon. The company also notes that Android (Android) owners won’t have long to wait either until the new functionality hits the Yelp client on that platform; we got a sneak peek of what Android users have to look forward to at Google (Google) I/O.
It may be derivative at this point, but it nevertheless stands to add a fun element to the process of checking in to locations. The addition of higher order titles in the royalty hierarchy for being the most active in your neighborhood or city are an interesting new spin on the concept as well. What do you think of Yelp’s move into the game mechanics territory of location services that Foursquare earlier blazed?
Yesterday at the D8 conference in Los Angeles, Steve Jobs laid out his vision of what’s to come. While Apple’s CEO went in-depth on a plethora of interesting subjects (e.g. Adobe Flash, the lost iPhone, iAds), he spent much of the stage time talking about the future of computing, specifically the PC.
Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD asked Jobs whether the tablet is going to replace the laptop. Jobs’s response was an analogy:
“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy.”
That short exchange says a lot about the direction Apple could take computing over the next decade. Apple still sells the Mac and the Macbook, and while the term “PC” is now synonymous with WindowsWindowsWindows machines, the meaning of PC — personal computer — can also apply to the Mac and Macbook.
Was Apple’s CEO referring to not only Windows PCs, but Macs as well? It’s tough to say for certain, but I think it’s very likely. Jobs clearly thinks PCs are on the way out, in favor of the more portable, less complex tablet and mobile form factors. His iPad has already validated the market for tablets, and we expect many more tablets to enter the market over the next few years.
Apple lost the PC market to Microsoft years ago. If Jobs has his way though, that won’t matter — the market will shift towards mobile computing devices like the iPhone and the iPad, both of which Apple has complete control over. The tech titan doesn’t have full control over the Mac OS or its desktop, which must be frustrating to a man who relishes control.
Will the tablet replace the PC? Not in the next decade, at least. Hell, the Windows XP operating system is still the world’s most popular OS. It takes time for disruptive technologies to take hold.
For now, the tablet will be a complementary device to the PC. The PC has had far more time to be fleshed out and performs countless tasks faster and better than the iPad or any other tablet device on the market. In a decade though, we may be singing a different tune.
Apple is one of the biggest supporters of HTML5, and Steve Jobs clearly states he thinks this new web standard is the future of the web. To show what, exactly, it means by that, Apple launched a HTML5 showcase, displaying what a HTML5-capable browser can do without the need to install any additional plugins.
In typical Apple style, the showcase consists of simple, elegant, and yet quite impressive demos of this technology. In one demo, you can type in some text, quickly change the font, its size and transparency, rotate it or add a shadow effect. Another lets you browse through a horizontal, vertical or grid-shaped gallery of images, while a particularly impressive demo lets you spin a 3D object by clicking and dragging.
Apple’s message is clear: HTML5 is mature enough for wide adoption, and sites which require add-ons to display content are a thing of the past. The text on the site states: “Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web.” Yes, you can definitely cover a lot of ground that used to belong to Flash with HTML5. What Apple doesn’t tell us is that one could create a similar showcase in Flash with far more advanced effects, which are way out of reach of HTML5 and CSS3.
To try out any of the demos you’ll need to download the latest version of Safari.
This interesting Sprint EVO commercial has just hit the tubes — and the TVs, as well.
For the network’s red-hot-though-as-yet-unlaunched device, the marketing folks have decided to make some pretty grandiose comparisons. Let’s gloss over whatever the narrator is saying, which is something along the lines of, “First isn’t later; it’s now.” If you have any idea what that means, you get a prize.*
*Not really.
Moving on to the imagery, we first see a prehistoric-looking wheel rolling into a velocipede, which tumbles into a locomotive standing on end. This turns into a domino chain of famously game-changing, ground-breaking inventions knocking into one another. A phonograph knocks over a microscope (we’re hoping this isn’t intended to be chronolgical), which bashes into a typewriter and a dangling cluster of lightbulbs. A telephone, a camera, an automobile and a wall of televisions also line up for our consideration.
Without belaboring the point any further, which Sprint indeed does, the company is comparing the phone, one in a string of similar devices such as the iPhone and the Droid, to space travel and microprocessors.
We don’t think so. It’s cool, and we get that Sprint wants us to know it’s the first 4G device, but they didn’t reinvent the wheel. Or space travel.
While this bit of filmic whimsy might appeal to some, I personally preferred the hard, cold awesomeness of the robotic arms in the Motorola Droid ads. What do you think of this commercial? Is Sprint exaggerating the EVO’s impact? Or is it a cool bit of advertising that will speak to more people than previous smartphone campaigns?
On Sunday, Skype 2.0 was launched for the iPhone 3G, bringing a long-sought feature to the table: making calls over 3G. By now, 5 million users downloaded the application from the iTunes Store, showing just how important this feature was to users.
Unfortunately, the new feature came with an unpleasant announcement: after August 2010, Skype will start charging a monthly fee for the 3G calling feature – on top of whatever fee you’re already paying your mobile operator for data transfer.
Skype promises the fee will be reasonable. “We’re not going to want to price ourselves out of the market. I can’t ignore the fact that consumers (currently) use us for free,” said Russ Shaw, Skype’s general manager for mobile. Still, one cannot help but wonder how the users will react when faced with a double fee for mobile VoIP calls. How do you feel about it? Will you continue using Skype over 3G after the fee is introduced? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Nielsen has released a new mobile application report and its findings showcase not only the increase in smartphone usage, but also what applications are most popular. For its report, Nielsen surveyed more than 4,200 people who had downloaded a mobile application in the last 30 days.
The survey really highlights just how much smartphone ownership trails traditional feature phone ownership, at least in the U.S. Nielsen’s study shows that 21% of American wireless subscribers have smartphones.
Still, even non-smartphone users have heavily embraced mobile apps. Nielsen’s survey indicates that the average number of apps that a feature phone user has on his or her device is 10, while the average number of apps a smartphone user has is 22.
Broken down even further, the average number of installed apps based on smartphone OS looks like this:
While the specific applications vary from platform to platform, the most popular apps across smartphones were pretty consistent in this report: Maps, weather, Facebook and music all had strong showings.
Check out this chart which breaks down the five most popular apps by smartphone OS:
It’s interesting to see just how much Facebook dominates the mobile app space; it’s one of the top five apps on each of the platforms highlighted. Still, Nielsen notes that broken down by demographic, MySpace (MySpace) is still very popular among teens and that LinkedIn (LinkedIn) is strong in the 25-44 demographic.
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