By Brian X. Chen
Wired.com
Plenty of iPhone programmers whine about their failure to strike it rich in the App Store, but Tap Tap Revenge developer Tapulous can’t complain. The maker of the popular rhythm game reported sales nearing $1 million per month.
The Palo Alto, California startup told Reuters that it generates the revenue through sales of its games, ads and selling songs inside games.
Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhone OS devices (iPhones and iPod Touch units) to date. Earlier this year, research firm ComScore estimated that one-third of iPhone OS users had installed Tap Tap Revenge, Tapulous’ most popular game title. Many compare the game to Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution. (In Tap Tap Revenge, you tap glowing dots as they hit the bottom of the screen.)
Tap Tap Revenge 3, the latest version of Tapulous’ game, is $1 in the App Store. There are free tracks, but mobile gamers have to buy some major artists’ songs for 50 cents apiece. The strategy seems to be working for artists, as well as for Tapulous.
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image by Wired.com
By Brian X. Chen
November 18, Wired.com
Don't hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe's Flash software: Apple's terms-of-service agreement prohibits it.
Although Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone, Apple is unlikely ever to permit it to appear in the handset's App Store, no matter how much customers want it.
"I'm pretty skeptical that Flash could be implemented in a way that doesn't violate the Terms of Service of the developer's agreement," said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular Tap Tap Revenge iPhone game.
Flash is Adobe's highly popular platform for displaying interactive graphics, animations and multimedia within a browser. According to Adobe, 98 percent of desktop computers currently support Flash, which has led to its widespread use by web developers. Adobe's recent announcement that it is working on a version of Flash for Windows Mobile has prompted speculation that an iPhone version might be coming soon. But the speculators may be waiting in vain, based on Apple's TOS and the company's history of tightly controlling applications for its smartphone platform.
Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it.
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image by wired
By Sinead Carew and Yinka Adegoke
September 24, Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile has rolled out Google's answer to the iPhone as the Web search giant makes its biggest stab yet at leaping from consumers' computers into their pockets with a device cheaper than rival Apple offers.
The widely-anticipated G1 phone, introduced on Tuesday made by HTC Corp, has a touch-sensitive screen, a computer-like keyboard, Wi-Fi connections and uses Google's new Android operating system.
Available in three colors -- black, white and brown -- it includes familiar Google services, such as Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube. Like the iPhone and other "smartphones" the device is meant to broaden the appeal of Web surfing on the go.
"If we see more mobile Web usage we'll be happy," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told Reuters after arriving at the launch on roller-blades.
His company, a powerhouse in Web advertising, would benefit if Android led more cell users to spend time on the Web, no matter which phone they are using.
Google is well ahead of rivals Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp in Web search on computers, but it wants to use Android to ensure this dominance carries over to the phone when mobile Web surfing becomes more popular.
But while no clear mobile Web winner has emerged so far, Google faces stiff competition from longer established phone players such as Nokia, Research In Motion Ltd's BlackBerry and Microsoft, as well as Apple.
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photo: The new G1 phone running Google's Android software is displayed in New York September 23, 2008. T-Mobile USA, a Deutsche Telekom AG unit, will sell the first phone powered by Google Inc's Android operating system under the brand name T-Mobile G1, said its partner Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday. (REUTERS/Jacob Silberberg)
By Brian X. Chen
August 11, Wired
Nullriver's short-lived iPhone application NetShare, which turns your iPhone into a wireless modem for your laptop, might not be returning to the App Store after all.
Earlier in the week, Nullriver received a response from Apple saying the removal of NetShare was a mistake that required "technical review." It turns out that was a blanket term, because in a phone interview today Nullriver's CEO Adam Dan said Apple was reviewing user contracts with providers, including AT&T.
Though Apple is continuing to make Nullriver sit and wait, we've already received confirmation from AT&T spokesperson Brad Mays that tethering with iPhone is not allowed. He cited a clause in AT&T's Terms and Conditions:
"Furthermore, plans(unless specifically designated for tethering usage) cannot be used for any applications that tether the device (through use of, including without limitation, connection kits, other phone/PDA-to computer accessories, Bluetooth® or any other wireless technology) to Personal Computers (including without limitation, laptops), or other equipment for any purpose."
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image by wired
2.0 software is the biggest improvement, reviewers say
By Suzanne Choney
July 9, MSNBC
The new iPhone 3G is “worth the wait,” “mostly keeps its promises,” but is “not so much better that it turns all those original iPhones into has-beens,” according to reviews published Wednesday by USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
The phone, which goes on sale Friday, a little more than a year after the original iPhone was launched, is being lauded for its improvements, including a faster Web-browsing experience and built-in GPS receiver.
But one of the most important improvements to Apple’s device is not in its hardware, reviewers said, but rather the 2.0 software that comes with it, which will also be available at no cost to current iPhone owners on Friday.
While the iPhone 3G still does not have voice dialing, video recording or copy-and-paste features used in many other smartphones, it does have “one towering tsunami of a feature” that should silence “Appleholics” who have “expressed dismay at how little the handset has changed,” wrote David Pogue of The New York Times.
That feature is the iPhone App Store, part of the 2.0 software, and “a central, complete, drop-dead simple online catalog of new programs for the iPhone,” he said.
The iPhone 3G, so named for the faster, third-generation wireless network it runs on, instead of 2.5G used by the first-generation iPhone, is definitely faster for e-mail and Web access, reviewers found.
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photo: The new iPhone 3G, which goes on sale Friday, features an App Store as part of its 2.0 software (Courtesy of Apple)
Created by Rune Larsen
By Florin Troaca, Communications News Editor
June 27, Softpedia
After the amazing Morph handset, presented by Nokia at the beginning of the year, we now have another shape-shifting concept to bear the Finnish giant manufacturer's logo. Named exactly Nokia ShapeShift, the new concept is not presented by Nokia, as it was the case with Morph, but by Rune Larsen, a designer who is not at his first attempt of this kind.
Unlike Morph, which should be a device that can entirely change its form, Rune Larsen's Nokia is able to change only the shape of its touchscreen display. More exactly, the ShapeShift's display would be made out of two special-plastic layers – the inner one being rigid and the outer one being flexible. Between them, a thin layer of a liquid substance should be able to transform the touchscreen and turn it into an alphanumeric or a QWERTY keypad.
According to Larsen, the nice-looking Nokia ShapeShift would not be heavier than 125 grams and it would measure only 110 x 55 x 12 millimeters. Moreover, its display would be a 4 inch one – larger than any display currently packed in any other mobile device.
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photo: Nokia ShapeShift concept phone (Credits: Rune Larsen)
By Lisa Katayama
June 6, Wired
TOKYO -- Steve Jobs' new iPhone, expected to be unveiled Monday, is headed to Japan by the end of the year. But the device's famed ease of use may actually be a put off in Japan, where consumers want features, not simplicity.
Indeed, Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master.
"There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,'" says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo.
Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is "good for killing time during a long commute," Aoki says, "but it's definitely not elegant."
Japan has long been famous for its advanced cellphones with sci-fi features like location tracking, mobile credit card payment and live TV. These handsets have been the envy of consumers in the United States, where cell technology has trailed an estimated five years or more. But while many phones would do Captain Kirk proud, most of the features are hard to use or not used at all.
"Some people care about quality, but first and foremost it's about the features," says Nobi Hayashi, a journalist and author of Steve Jobs: The Greatest Creative Director. He estimates that the average person only uses 5 to 10 percent of the functions available on their handsets.
Japan is a culture of spec sheets. When consumers go to electronics stores to buy a cellphone, they frequently line up the specifications side by side to compare them before deciding which one to buy.
Hayashi owns a Panasonic P905i, a fancy cellphone that doubles as a miniature but crisp 3-inch TV. In addition to 3G and GPS, the device has a 5.1-megapixel camera and motion sensors that enable Wii-style games to be played sitting on the train.
"When I show this to visitors from the U.S, they're amazed," Hayashi says. "They think there's no way anybody would want an iPhone in Japan. But that's only because I'm setting it up for them so that they can see the cool features."
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photo by wired
By Charlie Sorrel
May 20, Wired
A June 9 launch date for the iPhone 2? No surprises there, and now it looks like inside sources are confirming the June 9 date, which is also when Steve Jobs' keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is scheduled.
But Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz has got wind of the details of the launch, and his source tells him that the Second Coming will be a worldwide event -- not just in the United States. He also claims that his snitch, "someone very, very close to the 3-G iPhone launch", says that the current fixed pricing model will be discontinued in favor of a more Euro-friendly flexible price point, one that can shift subject to the markets and the whims of the telcos.
The last point concerns Spain. As we reported this morning, Telefónica will indeed carry the iPhone, and will be launching it along with its brand new Madrid megastore on June 18.
This seems plausible enough. Despite the odd delay, all of Apple's hardware ships worldwide immediately upon launch. And the evidence coming in from around the world corroborates Jesus' story: The million and one one-line press releases from cellphone carriers announcing deals with Apple, for one, and the iPhone drought in the UK, Germany and even the online Apple store, for another. What is amazing is that Apple kept things quiet for so long, considering the amount of people involved.
So far, we count over 40 countries with iPhone deals, and in some of these there will be multiple carriers offering the iPhone.
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image by Wired
Plan enables travelers to make, receive calls through onboard base station
April 8, MSNBC
BRUSSELS, Belgium - You can use your cell phone in the skies over Europe as early as this summer under new European Union rules — allowing travelers to stay in touch but also raising the cringe-inducing prospect of being stuck next to a chatterbox at 30,000 feet.
Announcing the guidelines Monday, EU officials said they expect several Europe-based airlines to move within the next few months to launch services, effectively making the 27-nation bloc the first region in the world to scrap bans on the use of cell phones in the sky.
They insisted that the new rules would not heighten the risk of terrorism or interfere with flight instruments, explaining the system, relying on European GSM technology, has been thoroughly tested and safeguards will be enacted against the terror threat.
The United States and many other countries ban the use of cell phones and other mobile devices in the air because of concern they could disrupt a plane's instruments.
Travelers expressed fears about another kind of disruption: Noisy passengers.
"If they use a mobile phone on long distance flights, it would be an inconvenience, especially at night," said train commuter Stein Smulders, from Halle, Belgium.
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photo by Getty Images
The channel, known as PIX, will be stocked with titles such as 'Ghostbusters' and 'Stand by Me'
By Andrew Wallenstein
April 2, AdWeek
LAS VEGAS Sony Pictures Television is looking to launch the first movie network on mobile phones in the U.S.
The studio has signed a deal with AT&T and MediaFLO USA to launch the linear channel as one of two exclusive channels coming to the newly announced AT&T Mobile TV with FLO service in May.
The channel, to be known as PIX, will be stocked with titles such as Ghostbusters, Philadelphia and Stand by Me from Sony labels including Columbia, TriStar, Screen Gems and Sony Classics.
Mobile has been viewed mostly as a marketing platform for theatricals in the U.S. With the domestic mobile video category for even short-form clips lagging behind markets in Europe and Asia, Sony is looking to entice viewers with more diverse content offerings.
"What you see a lot on the carrier decks is promotional content that people can snack a little on," said Eric Berger, vp, mobile entertainment at SPT. "There's nothing currently there as deeply entertaining as these movies."
Films have been made available on handsets on an on-demand basis. Sony was one of several studios that contributed titles to content aggregator MSpot, which teamed with Sprint to launch MSpot Movies in 2006.
Sony always has been bullish on films via mobile. The studio also was the first in the U.S. to embed full-length titles on memory cards for handsets.
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photo: Sony is looking to entice viewers with more diverse content offerings (AdWeek)
By Edward Robinson and Ari Levy
March 27, Bloomberg
On a chilly February morning, Andy Rubin hustles past equation-filled whiteboards in a two-story building on Google Inc.'s Silicon Valley campus.
Rubin, a computer scientist who builds robots for fun, has spent three years in this top-secret sanctum of the Googleplex. He's putting the final touches on one of the most ambitious and potentially humbling projects the Internet juggernaut has ever undertaken: an operating system for cellular phones that's designed to give Google the same grip on the mobile Web that it commands in online searches on personal computers.
``We've gotten to the point where anyone can build a cell phone,'' says Rubin, 44, dressed in blue jeans and a red crewneck T-shirt as he explains why Google is piling into wireless, the Internet's new frontier. ``What's important now is software, having the next cool application.''
After luring an audience that tops 588 million people who search in more than 200 languages and winning 72 percent of the $22.5 billion in annual advertising linked to Web queries, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are hunting beyond the PC for growth. Fewer googlers are clicking on the text ads that run alongside Google's search results, threatening the area that generated most of the company's $16.6 billion in 2007 sales.
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photo: Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms for Google Inc., poses for a photograph at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California on Feb. 26, 2008. Rubin is creating Google-powered cell phones. Photographer: Ian White/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg News
March 14, CNN
From iPods to navigation systems, some of today's hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam.
Computer users have been warned for years about virus threats from downloading Internet porn and opening suspicious e-mail attachments. Now they run the risk of picking up a digital infection just by plugging a new gizmo into their PCs.
Recent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include some of the most widely used tech devices: Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy stores, and TomTom navigation gear.
In most cases, Chinese factories -- where many companies have turned to keep prices low -- are the source.
So far, the virus problem appears to come from lax quality control, perhaps a careless worker plugging an infected music player into a factory computer used for testing, rather than organized sabotage by hackers or the Chinese factories.
It's the digital equivalent of the recent series of tainted products traced to China, including toxic toothpaste, poisonous pet food and toy trains coated in lead paint.
But sloppiness is the simplest explanation, not the only one.
If a virus is introduced at an earlier stage of production, by a corrupt employee or a hacker when software is uploaded to the gadget, then the problems could be far more serious and widespread.
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photo: Computer consultant Jerry Askew says a digital photo frame tried to infect his computer with four viruses (AP)
By Miwa Suzuki in Tokyo
March 04, News.com.au
DON'T read too much into it if someone winks at you in Japan – a researcher has developed a system that will soon let people run their iPods with the flick of an eye.
The system, comprising a single-chip computer and a couple of infrared sensors, monitors movements of the temple and is so tiny that it can be built into the side of a pair of eyeglasses.
Closing both eyes for one second starts an iPod, while blinking again stops the machine. A wink with the right eye makes the machine skip to the next tune while with a wink of the left eye it goes back.
As a person does not have to move either hand, the system can serve as "a third hand" for caregivers, rock-climbers, motorbike drivers and astronauts, as well as people with disabilities.
"You don't have to worry about the system moving incorrectly as the system picks up signals when you close your eyes firmly. You can use this when you're eating or chatting with someone," said the device's developer, Kazuhiro Taniguchi.
The system – dubbed "Kome Kami Switch", or "Temple Switch" – can easily differentiate a deliberate one-second wink from natural blinking, said Mr Taniguchi, a researcher at state-run Osaka University's Graduate School of Engineering Science.
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photo: iPod ... a prototype of Kazuhiro Taniguchi's winking-detector mounted to earphones / AFP
The equipment maker's inability to find a buyer for its beleaguered cell-phone unit revives the urgency of reforming the division from within
By Olga Kharif and Roger O. Crockett
Feb 25, Business Week
To many the recent announcement that Motorola (MOT) was exploring options for its troubled handset division was seen as a sign the once-legendary business would soon be sold. That seemed a better outcome than, say, a spinoff or internal overhaul for a business mired in losses.
Yet almost a month later, despite rumors of acquisition interest from such heavyweights as Korean electronics maker LG and U.S. PC giant Dell (DELL), bankers, analysts, and industry executives close to Motorola say a sale is neither imminent nor likely. Several Asian handset makers have publicly said they're not interested (BusinessWeek.com, 2/4/08). One banker gives a sale a "50-50" chance, at best.
And while potential buyers may have run proposals by the phone-making giant, none appears willing to offer as much as Motorola's management is seeking. Analysts say the beleaguered business is worth no more than about $8 billion—a far cry from the $10 billion it was once suggested that Motorola might be able to fetch.
The lack of acceptable bids has added renewed urgency to Motorola's backup plan: an in-house revamp. Improved performance would help Motorola sell the division at a more attractive price later, spin off a higher-value asset, or even hang on to a revitalized handset maker.
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photo by Getty Images
With the cell phone fast becoming an Internet entry point of choice, the handset maker is grappling with Google over the wireless Web
by Jack Ewing
Feb 11, Business Week
The battle for Internet turf is no longer just a figure of speech. Nokia (NOK) on Feb. 11 announced a quartet of new handsets designed to more closely link global positioning systems (GPS) with the mobile Internet, bringing the Finnish company into more direct competition with Google Maps and staking a bigger claim to the emerging market for so-called location-based services.
The announcement came on the same day that Google (GOOG) encroached on Nokia territory by demonstrating a prototype of its Android operating system for mobile phones.
Both companies are betting that where people are located will become an important part of how they use the Net. Nokia is trying to claim that arena with handsets such as its new, top-of-the-line N96.
The device allows owners to shoot videos, "geotag" them with info about where the images were taken, and upload to a Nokia Web site that sounds suspiciously like Google's YouTube.
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photo by Business Week
