This weekend, I’ve been catching up on some reading. One post that was of particular interest to me was David Beach’s article from last week about developing for Android. Beach, who is a product manager at eBay Mobile and a co-founder of 12seconds, basically says that the experience sucks for a number of reasons (all of which Google can fix, but will take quite a bit of work and time). But one quote in particular stuck out to me:

Android has succeeded despite Google. In fact it’s safe to say that Android is successful for one primary reason. The iPhone is only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was on Verizon a year ago. Android would be no where near as popular.

Obviously, Beach isn’t the first person to bring this idea up. But he brings it up in a way that he’s able to back-up his feelings from a developers’ perspective, while at the same time roping in what isn’t ideal from a consumer perspective about Android as well.

The term “social network” is of course synonymous with online networks like Facebook. But think about what you’re actual social life is like for a second. Are you really closest to the people whose items you “like” the most on Facebook? What about the people you @reply or retweet on Twitter? The people you reblog the most on Tumblr? If you’re anything like me, probably not. Instead, the best indicator of who I actually interact with socially the most in real life are the calls I make and the texts I send — it’s all mobile interaction.

According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.

Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren’t required to share all the details. Some do anyway.

Not Apple, though. The company is keeping secrets as usual, this time from O2 EcoRatings the UK-based initiative to rank the most and least environmentally sustainable mobile phones.

As a longtime Apple TV owner, I’ll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that’s why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense — at least for now.

When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it’s a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.

Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I’ve read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn’t being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.

First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don’t know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?

Well, again, it’s about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple?

“I would not conclude we are or are not doing a streaming deal with them,” Coinstar CEO Paul Davis told Bloomberg. Well that clears things right up.

Filed under: Social Software, Mobile

The official Twitter for iPhone app has updated, and with the latest update it became a universal app, meaning it has native iPhone and iPad versions. While the iPhone version continues to incrementally improve, it's the iPad version that is really remarkable.

It took me a little while to get used to it, because the user interface is fairly busy. But you get a heck of a lot of bang for your buck with all that busy-ness. While most Twitter apps on the iPad work best in portrait mode, and Twitter for iPad works fine that way, it really seems optimized for use in landscape mode.

Whether by design or accident, Ping's lack of integration with other social networks, or even with the web itself, is now its most compelling feature — at least from a strategic perspective. It's essentially an e-commerce platform for music disguised as a social network.

Apple found a way to cram a large number of iPhone 4 features in the new iPod touch: retina display, two cameras with FaceTime support, and the A4 chip. So it's just like a contract-free iPhone 4 without voice right? Wrong on at least three counts.

Only 24 hours after the launch of Apple's new social network, Ping, the service has been overrun by spammers. The fraudsters have created iTunes profiles and are posting links to a number of online scams, including ones that promises "free iPhones" or "free iPads" in exchange for filling out online surveys. For the most part, these suspicious links are being posted in the comments sections of the most popular artists on Ping, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and others, all of whom are among the recommended accounts linked to from the Ping homepage.

Sponsor

An interesting beneficiary of Apple’s launch of music-oriented social network Ping—social status updater Ping.fm. According to Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, Ping.fm saw a record number of accounts created yesterday (Seesmic acquired Ping.fm earlier this year).

Could it be a coincidence? Definitely, not. When you Google “Ping,” Ping.fm is the second result under the golf equipment site PING (this doesn’t include News results). Apple’s Ping is actually the fourth result (not including Video results). On Bing, Ping.fm is the third result, behind the golf company and the Wikipedia page for Ping. Clearly, as people starting becoming curious about Apple’s Ping yesterday on search portals, they also found Ping.fm in results.

Yesterday, Apple launched iTunes Ping, their new music social network. Part of that launch was a very basic implementation of Facebook Connect, simply to hook in and find out which of your Facebook friends were also using Ping. I tried it yesterday and it worked fine. But this morning the option vanished and everyone was left wondering what happened?

Well, it vanished because Facebook started blocking iTunes Ping from accessing their API, we’ve heard (just as AllThingsD and New York Times have as well). Obviously, there’s no point in having a feature that doesn’t work — so Apple simply removed it.

There seems to be some confusion out there right now about iTunes Ping, Apple’s new music social network, and Facebook. Some people seem to think it was never a part of iTunes, that Apple decided against connecting; while other reports say they think it was at one point integrated, but that it wasn’t working and has since been removed. I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping — because I used it.

When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.

Further, looking at my Facebook account, I’m still connected to Apple’s Ping app there. And so are 27 of my Facebook friends, currently. Apple has removed the implementation from iTunes for right now, but the app is still live and connected on Facebook.

Twitter is launching the first native app it's built from scratch tonight, Twitter for iPad. Aimed at fostering content consumption, the app is designed for new users and power users alike. The iPad app indicates the direction all Twitter-designed apps will be heading

Filed under: Audio, Apple

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Apple, Social Software

The software centerpiece of Apple's fall event today was iOS 4.1, available for free download next week. The new version of the OS delivers the expected fixes for problems with Bluetooth and the proximity sensor, along with speeding up performance on iPhone 3G (finally!). It also packs two major new features: Game Center and HDR photos.

Game Center allows you to compete against your friends in any compatible game, unlocking achievements and moving up the leaderboard. It also introduces the possibility of live player vs. player games on the iPhone, with Push-powered notifications when someone challenges you. You can add friends or let Apple match you up with opponents. Existing popular games will be compatible with Game Center, too: Steve Jobs showed a screenshot of a leaderboard for the bestselling Angry Birds.

The Gmail team continues to push HTML5 hard, and their latest efforts mean that Safari users can now drag and drop attachments onto their Gmail window (just like Chrome and Firefox users have been able to do for a while).

The same goes for dragging images into messages. One feature that Safari users now have over Firefox users is that "new windows outlive the original Gmail window." This means that you can pop out a chat window and close the original Gmail tab, and things will keep humming along just fine. I hope that the final version of Firefox 4 will support this.
 

Gmail drag-and-drop now works in Safari, too originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EST.

According to website analytics company StatCounter, Google Chrome has now overtaken Apple’s Safari in the US browser market for the first time on a weekly basis, claiming third place overall.

StatCounter, which says it analyzed some 874 million pages viewed on its network of over 3 million websites in the US alone for the week 21 to 27 June 2010, pegs Chrome’s market share at 8.97%, ahead of Safari with 8.88%. Internet Explorer still dominates the US Internet browser market with 52%, followed by Firefox with 28.5%, still according to StatCounter.

Worldwide, both StatCounter and Net Applications put Google’s Chrome solidly in the third spot, although the market share percentages differ between both companies’ findings.

Filed under: Apple, Browsers

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Video, News, Adobe, Apple, Google, web 2.0, Browsers

Whether you're on Team Apple or Team Adobe in the whole Flash vs. HTML5 brouhaha, you really can't dispute just how nice some of the new HTML5 and CSS3 features are, and while Microsoft was quick to throw a demo page up to tout IE9's capabilities, Apple for some reason waited until yesterday to post one for Safari.