CompareMobiles.com

Apple announces social networking service which will display the music interests of friends via iTunes, iPhones and iPod TouchHaving cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping.Ping will be integrated into Apple’s latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or “Pingers”, to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they’re buying and what concerts they’re attending.Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work.”Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up,” he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter.The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.The feature is believed to have been based on the technology Apple acquired with the purchase of the former online music store Lala.com last year.The iTunes logo will no longer feature a CD – mirroring the change in the program’s focus.Jobs unveiled a range of other upgrades to its products and services, including a new version of Apple TV – which will allow users to stream television programmes and films.The company is also releasing a revamped range of iPods, including an iPod touch with front- and rear-facing camera, Jobs told an assembled crowd of journalists, bloggers and analysts in California.Until now the Apple TV device was “never a huge hit”, admitted Jobs.The box originally allowed users to buy films and television programmes, but the latest version, which is smaller and, at $99, much cheaper than its $229 predecessor, will only allow the renting, rather than purchasing, of content.Users will pay $4.99 for high-definition films on the day they come out on DVD, while the rent of high-definition TV shows will be $0.99, Apple announced.”We’ve sold a lot of them, but it’s never been a huge hit,” Jobs said of Apple TV. The new version will be available within a month.Jobs also introduced a new design across the range of iPods, including the latest Nano, featuring a rotatable screen and a new Shuffle which sees the return of buttons – its predecessor was voice activated.The new iPod Touch will have front- and rear-facing cameras, the latter of which will be able to record HD video content, Jobs added.AppleComputingSteve JobsitunesSoftwareiPodiPhoneMobile phonesTelecomsUnited StatesAdam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, blog, cheaper, HD, iphone, latest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, test, Touch, twitter, uk, update

The move will speed up access for people using the site via iPhones or AndroidMobile users in the UK, Europe and Middle East can now access an HTML5 version of Google’s YouTube video site, speeding up access for those accessing it via iPhones, Android or other mobile devices with browsers able to render HTML5 video content.The launch comes as mobile use of the web is growing rapidly: Google says that YouTube’s mobile site, m.youtube.com, gets more than 100m video playbacks a day – roughly the number of daily views youtube.com was getting when being acquired by Google in 2006 – and every minute an hour of video is uploaded to the site from a mobile device. Mobile video playback also grew by 160% in 2009 on the previous year, along with an increase in adoption of devices able to stream video.The US version of the HTML5 site for mobiles was launched last month.Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK consumes the most YouTube videos on mobile devices, followed by France, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.The original mobile version of YouTube launched in 2007, but relied on versions of Adobe’s Flash for playback – which was too taxing for most devices. Since then, the development of the HTML5 web standard, and of mobile browsers – notably WebKit, used by Apple in the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and by Google in Android – able to play back embedded video content using the H.264 codec, rather than Flash’s usual Sorensen or VP6 codecs, has meant that HTML5 video use has become feasible.Google says the decision has been driven by the dramatic growth in mobile access to YouTube, which is more than doubling every year.Several short-form video sites are building players in HTML5: Vimeo brought out a hybrid HTML5 version of its player earlier this month, designed for better mobile playback. But when US-only TV and movie streaming site Hulu unveiled a major revamp of its display earlier this year, it did so using Adobe Flash, saying HTML5 “doesn’t meet our customers’ needs”.The use of HTML5 does not mean that Flash is shut out of YouTube’s mobile version: Adobe’s product can encode video in H.264 as well. But the growing use of desktop browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, which can render H.264 video – and with the forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 also offering it – poses a long-term question about Flash’s continued widespread use.Brightcove, the video hosting service for many media organisations, began offering an HTML5 version of its site in March this year. The New York Times and Time Inc were among the first media outlets to integrate it – allowing playback on Apple’s popular mobile devices, which do not use Flash.Closer to home, Erik Huggers, director of BBC future media & technology, recently defended the corporation from accusations that its widespread use of Flash – on the iPlayer, in particular – betrayed a commitment to open standards.”Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience,” Huggers said, adding: “The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5′s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.”Though the BBC does deliver H.264-encoded video to Apple mobile devices, it does not do that for Android devices, citing concerns about copying of content via the Android platform, and instead serves Flash-based video to them.However YouTube has said that HTML5 is still some way from becoming the new standard for streaming long-form video content, such as BBC iPlayer content. “While HTML5′s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs,” said John Hardin, software engineer at YouTube, in a blogpost published in June. “Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”Microsoft has put its eggs in the HTML5 basket with next year’s release of its internet Explorer 9 browser. Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior director of internet Explorer, said in May this year: “We’re all in on HTML5. We’ve been co-chairing the HTML5 working group, and we’re actually leading the HTML5 testing group.”YouTubeHTML5Mobile phonesSoftwareComputingTelecomsInternetJosh Hallidayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, bbc, best, blog, drive, google, growth, HTC, iphone, launches, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, service, test, Touch, uk

‘If you don’t want an iPhone 4, don’t buy it’

We have written quite enough about Vodafone New Zealand’s chaotic iPhone 4 launch last week, although Reg reader and Kiwi blogger Ahmad disagrees.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

Tags: blog, iphone, new, phone, source the register, vodafone

Reports that phone-maker Nokia has launched top-level search as it struggles with falling profits and declining market share

Nokia is reported to be searching for a new chief executive as its CEO for the past four years, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, struggles with the company’s falling profits and market share, notably in the smartphone market.

The report in the Wall Street Journal of the top-level search follows reports on Bloomberg at the end of last week that the board of the Finnish company was calling for changes after seeing the company’s value slump by $77bn (€60bn) – about 67% – in the three years since 2007, when first Apple’s iPhone and then Google’s Android platform have transformed the smartphone market.

Although Nokia is the world’s largest phone-maker, and has the largest market share in smartphones at about 41%, it has issued two profit warnings in the past three months and seen its stock fall by 25% this year alone as it was forced to delay newer smartphones.

Nokia’s last big success in the smartphone market came four years ago with the N95, which boosted profits in its smartphone division to 21%. But since then Apple, Android and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, have eaten away at Nokia’s profitability, so that the division’s profit in its most recent figures was just 12%.

James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research in New York, told Bloomberg that a new chief executive is “the first order of business”. Nokia’s share price has dropped to €6.83, from €20.81 on June 29, 2007, when the iPhone went on sale.

The Android platform also poses a considerable threat to Nokia: Google announced earlier this year that it was activating 160,000 Android phones every day.

An analysis by Goldman Sachs earlier this month comparing smartphone companies’ profitability in 2007 with 2009 suggests that Apple has grabbed a growing slice of profit from the handset industry. While total profits remained static in total at about $14bn since 2007, the American company took up to $8bn in 2009, and is expected to take more than half the industry’s profits in 2010 and 2011 – despite selling far fewer handsets than its rivals.

Earlier this month the new head of Nokia’s Mobile Solutions division, Anssi Vanjoki, wrote a combative blogpost on Nokia’s “Conversations” blog in which he declared that “the fightback starts now” and said that “I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices. Achieving this will require performance and efforts over and above the norm.”

He also insisted that there were no plans to adopt Google’s free Android software platform; Nokia will instead remain with its own open-source Symbian and Meego mobile operating systems: “Symbian and MeeGo are the best software for our smartest devices. As such, we have no plans to use any other software. Despite rumours to the contrary, there are no plans to introduce an Android device from Nokia,” he wrote.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, blog, free, google, iphone, largest, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, sol, test, three, uk, world

Google has called time on US sales of its flagship Nexus One device, two months after pulling the plug on direct sales through its website.


Photo by mackarus on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Sales of the Android-powered device had been disappointing since its US launch at the beginning of the year, the unconventional initial point of sale – online-only – putting many customers off. The web store “remained a niche channel for early adopters,” admitted Google vice president of engineering in a blog post, adding: “It’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone”.

Although the Nexus One will be a disappointing setback for Google, the device widely-heralded as a market challenge to the Apple iPhone, work on the Nexus Two will only be hastened.

Google’s end-of-the-line news was announced in a blogpost on Friday, when all eyes were locked firmly on Cupertino with Apple’s iPhone 4 showdown.

The Nexus One will continue to be sold through Vodafone in Europe, despite stumbling belatedly into a competitive market. Developers will still be able to get their hands on the phone, though the web store will discontinue shipping to Europe.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, apple iphone, blog, google, iphone, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, phone, phones, sol, uk, vodafone

Microsoft should abandon or entirely reboot its mobile strategy because its latest product is barely as good as the iPhone from 2007 on the present developer offer

The as-yet unreleased Windows Phone 7 is a “waste of time and money”, a “disaster” that Microsoft should kill as soon as possible. So says Galen Gruman of Infoworld, who has watched an in-depth demonstration of the new phone software at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference which has been going on all week at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Windows Phone uses a “contact-centric” approach, where rather than doing “tasks” (in the iPhone app way), you are presented generally with contacts, and informed when someone has done something (updated their Facebook/Twitter feed, called you, etc). My personal first impression of the screenshots was “that’s really not going to scale to the point where you have 300 people in your contacts book and 20 Facebook friends and 50 emails and 100 people you follow on Twitter and 30 apps”, but I thought that was just me not following the thinking behind it.

But it looks like I may have been right.

Gruman started the year being impressed with early demos of Windows Phone 7 – but that’s worn off in a big way.

“Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw — with the caveat “so far.”

“No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.”

Ouch. What’s happened, Galen?

“The early demos were intriguing due to the use of the card metaphor to organize apps and information, providing a possible fluidity among apps and information that would let users swim through their business and social activities. And the distinct UI — though based on the unsuccessful Zune media player — looked as if it would stand out from the crowd of mobile devices that have largely copied the iPhone UI, such as Google’s Android, RIM’s touch-oriented BlackBerry Storm, and Palm’s WebOS.”

Hmm.

“But that was just the lipstick. Now, in Microsoft’s in-depth demo this week at the Mobile Beat conference, there’s no mistaking the big pig behind the gloss. Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is — I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess. A pig, in fact.”

There’s plenty more; it’s worth reading in depth. Gruman says that as well as resting on old technology, Windows Phone 7 is simply outdated:

“The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.”

Gruman went along to a presentation at WPC (which has been generally described as “lacklustre” – and certainly seems to have been much smaller than in previous years by all accounts) and was worried by what seemed like poor responses to the handful of outside developers who had come along.

Arguably, WPC is not the place where you’re going to find the hottest WP7 developers; it’s more about geeing up the people who will resell Microsoft products. But the fact that only a few months short of the grand launch of WP7 it can’t wow even developers for the platform sounds bad. Gruman’s description of the presentation makes it sound like one of those uncomfortable events where the tumbleweed was always at risk of rolling past.

And as for the “locked in a bunker since 2007″ jibe – don’t forget the Kin, which seems to have been the victim of political infighting at Microsoft, as the incoming developer team from Danger (which Microsoft bought to produce the Kin) found themselves mired in layers of management that effectively brought them to a dead stop. Read the full horror of it at the Mini-Microsoft blog (by a disaffected Microsoft manager, but the comments are from ex-Danger staff and others).

Back to Gruman, who points to the flaws with the “tiles” method:

“… the big tiles quickly eat up screen real estate (about four fit), so you don’t get the compact access to apps that all the other major mobile operating systems provide. I bet this will depress app sales for those poor souls unlucky enough to get seduced by the Microsoft brand or the inevitable discounts at the cellular stores as the carriers try to dump these devices in January 2011 for $25 (shades of the unlamented Kin).

“Plus, Microsoft has done its usual trick of gumming up the UI, even though this one is relatively simple. There are two ways to navigate through tiles: in panorama mode and in pivot mode. In both cases, the tile continues to the right, and you swipe to see more. In panorama mode, cut-off text on the right indicates there’s more (at Mobile Beat, a developer asked if users knew what that cut-off text was for, and the Microsoft rep essentially admitted they didn’t get it was a way to say “more”). In pivot mode, each tile is self-contained, and there is an icon to indicate there is more. It’s a subtle difference: Using a panorama basically means the tile continues because it won’t fit on screen, while using a pivot means you have a series of what are essentially pages. I bet developers and users will get confused very fast.

“Visions of Vista’s litter of control panel dialog boxes, Microsoft Bob, the Office ribbon, Clippy, and Windows 3 flew through my head — not that Windows Phone 7 looks like any of these; it just shares the same flaw of being obtuse.”

And that’s only for starters. Other complaints: the browser, IE7 with a bit of IE8, doesn’t support HTML5; there’s no multitasking except for Microsoft’s own apps (Android and, now, the iPhone both support cooperative multitasking by all apps); there doesn’t seem to be interapplication communication for third-party apps; there’s no copy-and-paste (emphasis added) – even though Apple was roundly and rightly criticised for not introducing it until summer 2009, and Windows Mobile 6.1 did have it.

Gruman says there’s going to be no come-from-behind take-over-the-world for Microsoft if this doesn’t succeed: RIM (prepping BlackBerry 6), Android, Apple and Nokia will all eat its lunch and dance on its grave.

At this point, people usually begin an ad-hominem, to ask whether Gruman is biased or (sigh) in the pay of company X or Y. Judge for yourself from the Infoworld author bio and item list.

Meanwhile, if anyone else has had a hands-on with Windows Phone 7 – via the developer kit or other methods – we’d love to hear about it. Good? Bad? Indifferent? What’s it really like?

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, card, comments, confused, email, google, iphone, latest, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, nokia, palm, phone, phones, released, review, reviews, sam, sim, storm, test, tmobile, Touch, twitter, uk, update, world

Gartner report suggests that ‘Symbian foundation is just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’

Despite being touted as the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, the folks over at Gartner believe the future for Symbian fans is not a happy one.

Forecasts to be published at the end of the month show Symbian is losing market share at an ever-increasing rate.

Symbian is still way ahead of the other players in terms of market share, and may be for some time to come, but the others (particularly Android) are catching up fast. (See Wikipedia’s graphic of the 2009 end-of-year share, which shows Nokia/Symbian at 44%, RIM at 19%, Apple at 15%, Android at 10% and Windows Mobile at 7%. Since then, Android has probably overtaken Apple.)

The reason behind the downward drift appears to lie in a lack of design and purpose. RIM, Apple, Google and Microsoft have all tailor-made their latest operating systems for high-end devices with large touchscreens, providing excellent user experiences.

On the other hand, Symbian software targets a much wider variety of phones, many at the lower end of the spectrum, with different interfaces and screen sizes to encounter.

User experience has never been a high point of the development for the Symbian Foundation and little seems to be changing in the future. Although it is planning to bring a fresh new look for applications, the refresh is not due until next year.

Says Gartner’s Nick Jones: “So if the weak UI [user interface] is threatening Symbian’s very survival the Foundation ought to be seriously worried, right? Wrong. I just looked on the Foundation web site and blogs at the roadmap and features for future releases. What I see is too much effort on stuff that really doesn’t matter.” Everyone would love HDMI output or an audio policy on their mobile phone but is this really necessary?

With the three big players in smart phones each attempting to up the ante with each new release, the competition in the smart phone market is still very alive. The release of iOS 4, BlackBerry 6 and Android 2 have all brought impressive overhauls to the user interface. Whether Symbian can remain competitive and relevant in this evolving market yet is to be seen.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, google, HD, latest, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, phone, phones, smart phone, test, three, Touch, uk, world

Growing speculation on the future of Apple’s iPhone 4 has hit the company where it hurts – and its reputation is also on the line

Apple shares dived by 4% last night, cutting $9.9bn (£6.5bn) off its $230bn value after speculation grew that the company would have to recall or issue hardware fixes for the new iPhone 4.

The fall follows a report by the independent American testing organisation Consumer Reports which said reception problems meant it could not recommend the device.

Apple was accused of censorship by removing discussions about the negative Consumer Reports evaluation from its official message boards over the weekend, though it seems now to have relented.

A number of PR experts contacted by Cult of Mac blog yesterday said a recall of the iPhone 4 was “inevitable,” comparing the situation to Toyota’s global recall of its hybrid cars earlier this year.

Yet others including Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, say that a wholesale recall would be a step too far, but that Apple needs to “replace, redesign, or relocate the proximity sensor” – which tells the phone when it is close to the user’s head or hand and changes its radio output and screen brightness accordingly.

UK consumer watchdog Which? told the Guardian that although it had done initial tests on the iPhone 4 proximity sensor – finding that the screen is “disabled” the closer to your head the phone is held – it would carry out a “more comprehensive” review of the device in the near future.

Others have suggested that Apple should give owners free rubber “bumpers” – sold for $29 (£25 in the UK) – which fit around the edge of the phone, ostensibly to protect it from damage, but which also cut the signal loss that is at the core of the dispute.

But for Apple to do that would be tantamount to admitting that the device has a design problem, which could open it up to class action lawsuits from aggrieved buyers.

Apple has tended to decline recalling products that have had design issues, preferring to deal on a limited basis where people complain. Earlier this week it quietly announced that it would replace faulty versions of its Time Capsule backup product, after thousands of them failed after just 18 months. When a number of its iBook computers were found to have faulty soldering in 2007 by a Danish consumer investigation, it did not issue a recall.

Apple UK had no comment this morning on whether it will be making any announcements about the iPhone. UK Consumers’ Association magazine Which? said that it intended to test the phone “soon”.

Despite the fall in the technology company’s share price, it remains the largest on the US stock market, ahead of long-term rival Microsoft. And although Consumer Reports did not “recommend” the iPhone 4, other commentators have pointed out that it still ranks it highest among the smartphones it has tested – and that its second-ranked smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, the predecessor to the latest version.

Even with a growing clamour from users and testers who have discovered that the phone’s reception seems to drop off abruptly when they position their hand around the left side, the company has remained almost silent – except for a statement on Friday 2 July, when it put out a “letter” a week after the phone’s release in which it said that the dropoff in reception was due to a “simple and surprising” mistake in every iPhone’s software which meant that it overstated signal strength in weak reception.

Although the launch on 28 June saw 1.7m iPhone 4s sold in the first three days, the most successful yet of the annual refreshments to the model, it has proved to be a continual headache for Apple.
The first issue to appear was the discoloration of the high-quality “retina display“, which appears to be linked to the adhesive used to bond the glass and display together.

But the major woe for consumers has been the signal issues. Testers at Consumer Reports said that holding the iPhone at the bottom left-hand corner causes the signal to decay significantly.

Despite Apple’s low-key suggestion that there is nothing wrong with the phone, it is understood that staff on its warranty service AppleCare have been advising customers to buy a case or hold the phone in a different way.

Consumer Reports has held off recommending the iPhone 4, despite it gaining a higher rating than all other smart phones they have evaluated.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, apple, blog, consumer, deal, free, global, HD, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, latest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, phone, phones, review, service, sim, smart phone, sol, test, three, uk

Reuters’ head of mobile Ilicco Elia has linked up journalists and bloggers, as well as bringing social media to the news giant

Job: global head of mobile, Reuters Consumer Media, Thomson Reuters
Age: 39
Industry: digital media
New entry

As news giant Reuters’ global head of mobile, Ilicco Elia is responsible for getting news to people on the move. Elia has looked to pioneer a new relationship between professional journalists and bloggers, sharing technology and incorporating social media techniques into its newsgathering operation.

A Reuters veteran at the age of 39 – he joined the company in 1990 after studying civil engineering at Manchester University – Elia has helped change the way consumers receive mobile multimedia news with Reuters’ news apps.

He has also worked closely with journalists and bloggers to help them adopt new digital technology and techniques in the field, as well as inviting prominent bloggers and Twitter users to Reuters’ social media events such as election news conferences with the three party leaders.

“You might not know the name but he makes things happen,” said our panel.

“Ilicio Elia has championed how important it is for traditional journalists to work with bloggers. He sees the blogosphere as a laboratory for the future of mobile journalism – just as the principles of journalism filter through to the bloggers, so their innovative techniques filter back to Reuters.

“His is a presence behind all facets of mobile technology.”

Elia is responsible for the strategy and production of Reuters’ portfolio of mobile websites, applications and alerts, including the development of the Thomson Reuters News Pro applications and Reuters Galleries, and has established partnerships with mobile carriers and manufacturers worldwide.

His mobile journalism project with Nokia enabled journalists to publish multimedia stories direct to the Reuters wires and website.

Elia has had a variety of roles in his 20 years at the company, including corporate brand manager, head of online experience for Reuters.com and experience manager for Reuters next-generation trading products.

He oversees a team of product managers in New York, Mumbai and Tokyo and works with development teams in North America, London and China and sales teams in New York and London.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, blog, consumer, global, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, phone, phones, three, twitter, uk, world

With iPhone and iPad sales responsible for the majority of Apple’s revenue, the company is losing interest in what was once its keystone product

In the technology world, the name Mary Meeker is one to conjure with. Her official job title is managing director at the investment bank Morgan Stanley. Unofficially, her title (granted by Barron’s, a specialist financial publication) is “Queen of the Net”. This is mainly because her regular research reports on “internet trends” have become required reading for anyone interested in understanding what’s going on in the networked economy.

But it also has something to do with the fact that she’s been around a long time. In August 1995, for example, her employer was the lead manager on the Netscape IPO which triggered the first internet boom, and she was the firm’s leading research analyst. In August 2004, Morgan Stanley also led on the Google IPO – and guess who was their leading analyst then too. Given the seven to one ratio between internet and calendar years, this means that Ms Meeker has been watching the industry for about 105 internet “years”.

Her latest “internet trends” presentation is a powerpoint essay so overloaded with data it would cause Edward Tufte, the celebrated expert on data visualisation, to faint. For me, two charts in particular stood out. The first shows sales of smartphones and PCs on the same timescale. It suggests that, sometime in 2012, sales of the phones will exceed those of PCs. The second chart contains two pie-charts which capture the distribution of Apple’s revenues in 2007 and 2010. The differences are striking.

In the second quarter of 2007, for example, 47% of Apple’s revenues came from its Macintosh range of computers. The iPod accounted for 29% of revenues and iTunes for 11%, while “Others” accounted for the remaining 11%. The iPhone brought in 0% for the simple reason that it didn’t go on sale until that summer.

Spool forward to the first quarter of 2010 and, according to Meeker, the iPhone now brings in 40% of Apple’s revenues, while the iPod and iTunes together account for 24%. Sales of Macintosh computers are now responsible for only 28% of the company’s sales. These are the numbers which underpin Steve Jobs’s recent assertion that Apple had become a “mobile devices” company.

He followed up with a new metaphor, likening PCs to “trucks” – ie things that companies need to have but which few individuals own. This kind of talk prompted journalists to wonder whether his long-term strategy was to get out of the computer business altogether. In a nicely ironic touch, a blogger wrote a “Dear John” letter from Steve to the Mac (you know the genre: “It’s been lovely knowing you but I feel that the time has come for us to realise our individual potentials separately…”). This triggered a terse, irritable response from Jobs. Suggestions that Apple was thinking of dropping the Mac were, he emailed, “completely wrong. Just wait”.

Well, we’re waiting. Some seasoned Mac users are beginning to get impatient. Dan Gillmor, the prominent Silicon Valley observer and evangelist for “citizen journalism”, has been a Mac user for many years, but recently announced that he’s moving to Linux running on the beautiful new ThinkPad laptops emerging from Lenovo. Other Mac users are beginning to mutter about whether Apple has essentially lost interest in what was once its keystone product. Sure, the company continues to make incremental improvements in the MacBook, Mac mini and iMac lines, but somehow the fire has gone out.

In a way, that’s not surprising. Companies go where the commercial opportunities are. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Apple’s recent history is that the spectacular growth opportunities are in mobile devices, not deskbound computers or even laptops. The iPad is selling at a rate of a million a month. More than 1.4 million of the new iPhones were sold in the first four days. And the pace seems to be increasing. It took the first iPhone 74 days to reach its first million. The iPad got there in 28. Only things like the Nintendo Wii (13 days) shift faster. Then there’s the small matter of the 40% contribution the iPhone now makes to Apple’s bottom line. In those circumstances, if you were Steve Jobs, what would you focus on?

For the rest of us, the thing to focus on is the way smartphones are overtaking PCs as the gateway that most people will use to access the internet. There are now only three players in that game – Apple, Google (via the Android operating system) and RIM (makers of the BlackBerry). Until recently, I would have said that the (open, permissive) Google/Android system would win out over the (closed, tightly controlled) Apple device. But sales of the new iPhone lead one to wonder if it will be Apple, and not Google, which replaces Microsoft as the company we love to hate.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, email, google, growth, iphone, latest, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, sam, sim, sol, test, three, Touch, uk, world

Antenna design on new iPhone is acknowledged as source of poor connectivity – but Apple says problem is inevitable and advises different grip. Or you could try duct tape…

Apple has issued official guidance – and its chief executive Steve Jobs has issued unofficial guidance – on how to avoid the widely-noted reception problems with the new iPhone 4 when held from below: don’t hold it that way.

The cause has been narrowed down to a circuit being formed when the skin bridges the gap between the left and bottom antennas that form the phone’s outer stainless steel bezel: depending on the conductance of the skin, it can make the phone reception drop off dramatically.

Emailed by the website Ars Technica about the problem, Jobs responded in his normal terse manner: “Just avoid holding it in that way,” he wrote – a response from Jobs that was received by a number of gadget review sites and customers in the US.

Or, in Apple’s official statement – which is only being passed out to news organisations which ask for a statement on the problem, rather than sent out (as happens with iPad or iPhone sales figures): “Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

The problem emerged within hours of the first iPhone 4 devices being delivered to customers in the US, with dozens posting videos to YouTube showing mobile reception dropping off dramatically when they picked up the phone. Some users wondered why Apple had not spotted the problem during its testing of the iPhone 4 before its launch, and wondered whether the £25 “bumpers” that Apple sells to go around the casing – and protect the metal antennas – was an implicit acknowledgement of the problem. Apple had no comment on Friday on whether it had discovered the problem during testing, or only after the phone went on sale.

Spencer Web, an antenna engineer with Antennasys, notes in a blog post that antennas for mobile phones are generally placed at the bottom of the phone, in order to keep the radiative parts of the phone as far away from the user’s head as possible. In the US the Federal Communications Commission measures the output of a phone, and the amount of non-ionising radiation given off, in specific tests – but Web says that those would not have picked up the problem: “when the FCC tests are run, the head is required to be in the vicinity of the phone. But, the hand is not!”

He added: “The antenna structure for the cell phone is still down at the bottom (I won’t address the WiFi nor GPS antennas in this blog entry). The iPhone 4 has two symmetrical slots in the stainless frame. If you short these slots, or cover them with your hand, the antenna performance will suffer (see this video I found on YouTube). There is no way around this, it’s a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple’s marketing department and Apple’s industrial designers, to name a few.”

There is some speculation that the problem only occurs on some phones because the antennas are usually covered with a clear finishing solution; if the finish did not cover them properly the phone might be more liable to the problem.

Meanwhile iPhone 4 users are developing their own solutions – which range from the use of duct or masking tape on the bottom edge, painting clear nail varnish over the gap, buying cases to cover the sides of the phone, or – the most expensive option – buying Apple’s “bumpers” which cover the edge of the phone.

Meanwhile another problem has appeared on some of the new models: yellow discoloration under the screen. According to one suggestion, this is due to a chemical used in the fixing process that joins the touchscreen to the glass above it and will fade in a few days. That remains to be seen.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, apple, blog, email, gadget, iphone, marketing, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, review, review site, sim, sol, test, Touch, uk

Jonathan Ive has designed his masterpiece, says Stephen Fry. And there’s video-calling and the crispest display ever

Just as the frenzy of the iPad launch subsides, it is time for anti-Apple frothers to have a new device waved in their angry faces and for pro-Apple droolers to get verbally bitch-slapped in the blogosphere for falling once more for Steve Jobs’s huckstering blandishments.

A year ago, iPhone 3GS was released with a new operating system and now iPhone 4 arrives with iOS 4.0, offering an array of long-awaited functions. Since that 2009 3GS launch, the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC in particular has upped its game and risen to Apple’s challenge, producing handsets for the Android OS that offer slews of features, including free turn-by-turn navigation, multi-tasking, removable batteries and highly customisable interfaces. What can Apple do to wrench back the crown?

The iPhone 4 is an object of rare beauty. Noticeably slimmer but a trifle heavier than predecessors, its new heft only adds to the profound feeling of quality and precision that the device exudes. Sharper edged, it is girt by a stainless steel band which cleverly houses all the antennae required by a modern smartphone. Jobs himself made a comparison between iPhone 4 and a classic Leica. With this device in my hand, I feel that I am holding its designer Jonathan Ive’s personal prototype, hand-machined as a proof-of-concept model. Ive is surely one of the most influential and gifted designers Britain has ever produced and the iPhone 4 may well be his masterpiece.

The phone is available unlocked in the UK. Mine came with a Vodafone mini-SIM which I swapped for an Orange, the network change working perfectly straight away. On the front can be discerned the lineaments of a forward-facing camera and, in the glorious glass obverse (which leads one to speculate that future models might allow solar charging), an extra eye reveals that LED flash has finally arrived. The existence of the front-facing camera allows video calling: Apple’s new open standard for this, called FaceTime, neatly and transparently turns an initial mobile phone call into WiFi video chat, saving data charges.

Once I had located someone else with an iPhone 4 (not easy the week before launch), I found FaceTime worked with astounding ease and in very impressive resolution. The main camera has been upgraded to 5 megapixels (crucially, without diminution of pixel size) and produces stunning images that might be, for many, reason enough to upgrade, especially when you consider the iPhone 4′s remarkable new Retina display. Retina delivers the crispest images I have ever seen on a smartphone. I found myself staring at onscreen text in disbelief.

Apple has produced, and third parties will doubtless emulate and improve, rubberised wraparound belts for iPhone 4 called Bumpers. They come in all kinds of colours and give the device great resilience. (I saw an Apple executive gleefully hurling his bumpered iPhone 4 across a room). With 720p HD video, a full-featured iMovie editing app, sweet multi-tasking, better mail, spellcheck, a bigger battery, inbuilt 3-axis gyroscope (wait for the gaming implications of that alone), extra pep and polish and that droolworthy form factor, Apple has once more leapfrogged the competition. HTC Android handsets still impress and offer a viable alternative for many, but iPhone 4′s star quality is irresistible.

stephenfry.com/blog

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, apple iphone, blog, charges, comparison, free, HD, HTC, iphone, iphone 3gs, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, orange, phone, phones, released, room, sim, sol, uk, vodafone

A study published in the BMJ on 23 June found no link between childhood cancer and mobile phone masts. Over the coming days and weeks we will publish updates on this story and links to sources of further information

• The BMJ has made this research paper freely available
• Email us an update or other useful links

Expert comment

2:00pm: Some comments on the BMJ study courtesy of the Science Media Centre in London.

Eileen Rubery, former head of the public health prevention department at the UK government’s department of health, said: “This is a carefully done study by a highly reputable group … the size of the sample is large and the approach appropriate. It is reassuring that no adverse effects have been found and this fits with the anticipated and known biological effects from such sites and so is consistent with the physiology and biology.”

Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, said: “This study seems exemplary in its approach. The findings are well concluded and the methodology is thorough. The findings are generally in support of both the current understanding of tissue interactions and also in support of the work done by other similar research groups. The data is complex and requires some interpretation but the abstract and conclusions are well considered and easy to follow.”

1.30pm: If you only have time to read two things related to the analysis of this story, here they are.

NHS Choices cuts through all the complexity with a superb article on its Behind the Headlines pages. It explains how the study was carried out, what the results are and what caveats there might be on the work.

One of the limitations to this study design is that the exposures being assessed occurred in the past, and therefore it can be difficult to assess them accurately, particularly if researchers rely only on people’s recall of events. However, in this study, researchers did not have to rely on people remembering or estimating their exposure to mobile phone masts, instead they used data on where individuals lived and known locations of mobile phone masts. This increases the reliability of the information about exposure.

Despite any perceived limitations, NHS Choices concludes that the BMJ study “appears well conducted”.

Funding

As well as elucidating the way the research was carried out, Ed Yong’s post at the Cancer Research UK blog addresses the issue of funding:

It’s also worth talking about sources of funding. This study was funded by an independent body called the UK Mobile Telecommunications Health Research Programme (MTHR). The MTHR was set up in 2001 to fund research into any possible health effects of mobile phones, following a recommendation by an independent expert group called the Stewart Committee.

The group is jointly funded by the UK Department of Health and the mobile telecommunications industry. It says, “In order to ensure that none of the funding bodies can influence the outcome of the MTHR Programme, it is run by an independent programme management committee.” This is a common theme in this area of research – industry funding has always been mediated by an independent third party, such as the International Union for Cancer Control.

In addition, CRUK have posted data showing that the rates of malignant brain tumours in the UK have remained stable over the past 10 years.

12.40pm: An article in the British Medical Journal today reports a study looking at whether there are any links between children developing leukaemia or a tumour of the brain and whether their mothers lived near mobile phone masts at the time of their birth.

Sarah Boseley’s write-up in the Guardian makes it clear that “Pregnant women who live close to mobile phone masts do not need to move house”. She continues:

Researchers from Imperial College London identified 1,397 children under five who were diagnosed with leukaemia or a tumour of the brain or central nervous system between 1999 and 2001. They compared each child with four children of the same gender who were born on the same day but had not developed cancer.

The researchers studied the distance of the mother’s home at the time of the birth from a phone mast, the total power output for base stations within 700 metres and the power density for base stations within 1,400 metres.

“We found no pattern to suggest that the children of mums living near a base station during pregnancy had a greater risk of developing cancer than those who lived elsewhere,” said Professor Paul Elliott, one of the report’s authors and director of the MRC-HPA centre for environment and health at Imperial.

Press roundup

In the Independent, health editor Jeremy Laurance gives some context for the study:

The increase in mobile phone use – from 9 million handsets in 1997 to 74 million in 2007 – has raised worries about the effects of exposure to low-frequency radiation. Several studies, including the Interphone study involving more than 10,000 people from 13 countries that was published last month, have found no damaging health effects from mobile phones themselves.

Public anxiety about transmitters has grown despite the level of individual exposure from transmitters being much lower than from mobile phones.

The LA Times Booster Shots blog reports some of the ways the researchers thought they might have improved their study:

The mothers whose children were diagnosed with cancer lived an average of 1,173 yards from a cellphone tower while they were pregnant – statistically indistinguishable from the 1,211 yards that separated the other pregnant women from their nearest cellphone towers. Tallying up the total power output of all cellphone towers within 766 yards of each pregnant woman’s home, they found that both groups had nearly the same exposure – 2.89 kilowatts for the mothers of cancer victims and 3.00 kilowatts for the other mothers.

Only one of their models revealed a difference that was statistically significant, though just barely. In that case, higher radio-frequency exposure was associated with a reduced risk of cancer of the brain or central nervous system. (This result calls to mind a mouse study from last year that found that electromagnetic radiation from cellphones actually protected mice from Alzheimer’s.) The results were published online Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The British researchers admitted their study would have been stronger if there had been some way to determine the actual radiation exposure for each pregnant woman instead of relying on mathematical models. They also would have liked to have tracked the exposure of babies after they were born, but the necessary data weren’t available. Still, they said that if the cellphone towers had doubled the risk for these childhood cancers, the odds that their study would have picked up on it were greater than 90%.

The Press Associaton, Associated Press, Bloomberg Business Week and Irish Times, and the Washington Post’s The Checkup blog also have reports.

Story summary

12.31pm: Pregnant women who live close to mobile phone masts do not need to move house, scientists said today, following the publication of a study which found no link to early childhood cancers.

There has been public concern over the possibility that living near phone masts could raise the cancer risk of small children and clusters of cases around masts have been reported. But a study published in the British Medical Journal – the first to examine possible links between phone masts and childhood cancer across Britain – found no cause for concern.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, blog, comments, compare, compared, email, free, government, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, sam, sim, station, uk, update

Glastonbury festival kicks off today, with Gorillaz replacing U2 as the Friday headliners. Check out the bands that will be playing and plan your weekend here
• Get the data

Glastonbury opened its doors to festivalgoers this morning. Revellers at Worthy Farm can look forward to a weekend packed with bands, including Damon Albarn’s side-project Gorillaz, who hastily took a headlining spot after U2 were forced to pull out last month when Bono suffered a spinal injury.

But Glastonbury is about so much more than the headline acts. Who else will be rocking Worthy Farm over the weekend of 23-27 June? Now the official Glastonbury site has put up the full timetable of acts – we’ve excised them for you and put them into a spreadsheet. Check out the embedded table, or download the spreadsheet, for the full line-up across all the main stages and venues.

Last year, @RichardAblewhite created a magnificent visual mash-up by combining the Datablog’s Glastonbury dataset with content from several other sites. He’s created another excellent mash-up for this year’s Glastonbury festival, which together with this dataset from Clashfinder General and the Orange GlastoNav app will enable data-savvy festivalgoers to plan their weekend with military precision.

Download the data

• DATA: The full Glastonbury line-up for 2010

World government data

• Search the world’s government with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?

Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory
• Follow us on Twitter

Data summary

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, blog, government, iphone, lg, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, orange, phone, phones, twitter, uk, world

Having lost its exclusive rights to sell Apple’s new phone, the mobile network now seems to have an inverse pricing at its low end to discourage 24-month contracts

O2 has announced the pricing for its iPhone 4 handsets – and seems to be trying to push people away from buying longer-term contracts.

Under the 24-month contracts, the phones are more expensive than the 18-month contracts, by between £70 (for the white 16GB version priced at £209 for 18 months, or £279 for 24 months) and £24 (for the black 32GB version, costing £299 for 18 months and £323 for 24 months). Even though the price plans at that tariff differ by £5 per month, over 18 months the 16GB handset works out cheaper on the lowest tariff by £10.

Pricing plans for Vodafone’s iPhone 4 leaked out earlier this week, although the company has not formally announced them and is only letting people indicate interest in ordering it.

Orange’s charges start at £169 for a 16GB phone on a £30-per month 24-month contract (£229 on £30 for 18 months)

O2′s pricing decision has puzzled people on Twitter: “O2 seems to have forgotten the idea is to lure people onto longer contract by *lowering* upfront costs. Duh.,” commented journalist Scott Colvey.

The decision – tied to O2′s decision to introduce strict caps on data downloads per month, varying between 500MB and 1GB, replacing its previous “unlimited” data contracts that many are still using – may mean a migration of former iPhone customers away from the company, which until last Christmas had the monopoly on iPhone sales in the UK. Now the phone is sold by Orange, Vodafone and 3 – though only Orange and Vodafone have announced prices.

Many iPhone owners who bought the second-generation iPhone in 2008 on 18- or 24-month contracts will be eligible to upgrade with O2 – or possibly to shift to another carrier.

Apple has apologised to would-be customers after overwhelming demand meant that its own and AT&T’s servers crashed when the phone went on sale in five countries on Tuesday. It says that 600,000 phones were ordered on the day – which suggests that it has tapped into huge pent-up demand from owners of older versions, as well as new buyers seeking to join the smartphone bandwagon.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, blog, charges, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, gadget, gadgets, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sol, tariff, tariffs, twitter, uk, vodafone

A small but important project has been taking place in London’s Tulse Hill for the past month, with nine young people being trained to developed apps that will benefit their communities.

Apps for Good is the latest scheme run by the Campaign for Digital Inclusion, which has been training young people in IT for 15 years reaching 1,500 in the UK so far. But the latest initiative by the non-profit organisation is to exploit the popularity of apps to involve young people in creating apps that could improve their communities.

Today is the graduation of the Apps for Good project. Nine young people between 17 and 26 have been working on app projects built on Google’s Android platform, with expert mentors from tech, mobile and startups guiding each team. Dell is supporting the project through its Youth Connect scheme.

CDI says the goal was to enable young people from low-income families to developer web and mobile apps for social change: “The key aim of the programme is to offer participants leading-edge problem-solving and technology skills based on Google’s Android platform to allow them to move on into education, employment or entrepreneurship.”

Stop & Search

Massive potential for this, and no small amount of power. Users, who will mostly be young people, detail their experiences of being stopped and searched by police including mapping the location, name and badge number of the officer and a sliding scale of how fair they felt their treatment was. The app also tells users their rights. Ultimately, the data from this app could build up a powerful record of any patterns in police stop and search, but the developers have already met the Metropolitan Police to discuss sharing feedback. “Our main aim was to help make stop and search more fair and help you know your rights.”

The trio were interviewed by the local Streatham Guardian last month, saying the idea was not to create something ‘anti-police; but to let young people feel more in control. All three have been stopped and searched. Download at the bottom of the page

Developers: Aaron Sonson, Satwant Singh Kenth and Gregory Paczowski

Studio Phly

The app helps aspiring musicians find studio space using and recording equipment based on those nearest to their location, and also acts as a noticeboard for studios who want to advertise to this audience. Download

Developers: Lemel Frank, Symon Morgan and Foyzul Hassan

Student Voice

Designed for students, the app will share recommendations and advice on London-based universities, lectures, tutors and also on clubs, libraries and local services. It gives universities a star rating, and students are incentivised to share their experience and advice through a rewards scheme. Users can also upload photos for each location. Download

Developers: Moses Sonson, Matthew Tanti and Carlos Mateus

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, gadget, gadgets, global, google, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, service, sol, test, three, uk

Claims about misleading “unlimited” broadband promotions have been brewing for years, but a formal review by the advertising regulator could be about to put a cap on the practice.

This is likely to mean two things. Firstly, that fixed-line and mobile operators will not be able to use the term “unlimited broadband” unless they are offering a genuinely unlimited service – and that means nothing in the small print that lets the provider send warnings to customers if they reach a certain threshhold. A Which? study last year found that had happened to 11% of a base of 11,000 broadband users.

Which? also found that increased consuer use of multimedia services is making it harder for providers to keep up with demand.


Photo by Gavin St. Ours on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The second implication is for smartphone tariffs, which are now starting to specify data caps. O2 is ditching “unlimited” data plans with the launch of the iPhone 4 in the UK on 24 June, while Vodafone ditched the term last December, based on feedback ahead of its introductory iPhone tariff. O2 have insisted that only 3% of the heaviest data users will notice the “limited” tariffs and will have to pay a data charge top-up for usage over their tariff allowance.

The review is being led by the Advertising Standards Authority, reports New Media Age, which will work with two ad industry bodies to make a comprehensive assessment of industry claims and consumer complaints on both broadband speeds and “unlimited” tariff penalties.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, gadget, gadgets, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, phone, phones, review, service, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone

People have been talking about the coming mobile revolution for 20 years, but on a recent book tour with my Android phone, I realised it’s finally here

I’ve just come back from a month-long, multi-city, US and Canada book tour for my new novel, For the Win. I’ve done book tours before, but this one was different: this was the tour with an Android Nexus One phone, and it was game-changing.

I’ve been told about the coming mobile revolution for 20 years now, but frankly, mobile phones are generally rubbish. The carriers are awful and abusive. The apps suck. And so on. Something’s changed.

Take directions: Google Maps are, of course, the ne plus ultra of navigation, so having them in your pocket is powerful. But combine that with Android’s stellar turn-by-turn directions, which incorporates Google’s traffic data to get you round the terrible snarls, and things get really easy. What’s more, the ability to program the map destination by speaking it (Google’s various voice apps have given it improbably good voice-recognition performance, producing a training set that is wide and deep), or by photographing it on a printout (using the Google Goggles app that converts images to words to Google searches), felt futuristic and deeply right.

Young adult book tours involve a lot of school visits, often in deep suburbs that the media escorts supplied by your publisher aren’t that familiar with (these escorts often come armed with confusing Mapquest printouts that seem to come from an earlier century). When you’re not running late to a tour stop, you’re often running early, with just enough time to stop for a cup of coffee and a snack. Add Google location search to that and you can avoid going to a petrol station or (even worse) McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts and find hidden gems that you’d have to be a local to get at otherwise. I ate better on this tour than I ever have before.

I “rooted” my Nexus One, breaking into the OS so that I could easily “tether” it to my laptop, using it as a 3G modem between tour stops (we didn’t have to root my wife’s matching phone, as Google supplied us with an unlocked developer handset). My typical tour day started at 5am with breakfast and work on the novel, then a 6am interview with someone in Europe, then pickup, two to four school visits with a short lunch break, three or four interviews, then a bookstore signing or a plane (or both). As busy as that sounds, there’s actually a fair bit of dead time in it while sitting in the escort’s car, trying to find the next stop.

This time round, I plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and the phone into the laptop – this gave the phone a battery charge and the laptop internet access. And best of all, it meant that I could harvest those dead minutes to answer emails, keep on blogging, and generally stay abreast of things.

Which meant that I got lots more of the touring author’s most precious commodity: sleep. On previous tours, returning to the hotel meant sitting down for three to four hours’ worth of emails before bed, which cut my sleep time to less than four hours some nights. But this time round, I got back to the room completely caught up, and was able to flop down in bed, eat some minibar cashews, and hit the sack.

Travelling with your own internet source is brilliant. At Atlanta airport, I was stuck for four hours while a monster storm hammered the building with barrages of lightning. Immediately, every one of the expensive Wi-Fi networks in the building went dead as thousands of stranded travellers tried to use them all at once. I found a corner with a mains outlet, plugged in the laptop, tethered my phone, and enjoyed my own private network connection. It wasn’t fast, but it was free and it worked.

I still have a US T-Mobile account from when I lived in the US, and I pay for the unlimited data plan there (which, like the Orange UK Sim I use here, has a bizarre and fraudulent definition of “unlimited” that includes a data cap). It’s easily worth keeping the account alive for those times that I’m back in the US – one day’s 3G savings (not having to pay for expensive hotel and airport broadband) pays for a month’s mobile service.

But when I travel to places where I don’t have a Sim, such as France or Germany, where I’ll be touring in September, it’s not pretty. Orange charges nearly £1 per megabyte, and its bolt-on Euro traveller plans charge something like £30 for 30MB, and limit you to 30MB per month. I can’t figure out who the putative customer for this is: the travelling exec who really needs email on the road, but receives a tiny trickle of email every day, apparently.

The most absurd part is when you take an Orange UK Sim to France (France Telecom being Orange’s parent company) or a T-Mobile Sim to Germany (Deutsche Telekom has the same relationship to T-Mobile except in the UK, where it’s a joint venture with France Telecom) and the company charges an extortionate roaming charge for using their parent company’s network, on the grounds that they’re “different companies”.

Which is the fundamental paradox of mobile – so long as the mobile carriers remain a part of mobile computing, it will only work for so long as you don’t go anywhere.

• Cory Doctorow’s new novel, For The Win, is out now

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, best, blog, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, email, free, google, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, orange, phone, phones, roaming, room, sam, service, sim, sol, station, storm, t-mobile, three, uk, venture

Steve Jobs denied that Apple is developing a search engine when he was asked on stage at the D8 conference recently – not that that tells us anything about what’s really going on in Cupertino’s labs.

But the speculation persists not about if Apple will move into search, but when, how and why.

It was the acquisition of Siri in April that first raised the flags. The deal for somewhere in the region of £200m, according to TechCrunch, gained Apple a small but established app enabling voice command and search for mobile.

While it might not seem to compete directly with Google’s primary web search tool, anything in search will compete with something Google is working on. And as both Apple and Google have moved further into the mobile space, the two have become increasingly conflicted. (There are subtle indications of the two moving apart; Jobs last week announced that Bing would be added to the iPhone’s search engine options, though Google remains the default.)

So what exactly is Apple developing? 


Photo by Dani Gutiérrez on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Where did Siri come from?

Thanks to xconomy‘s excellent background piece, we know that it was born out of a defence research project at SRI International, where it was funded by US taxpayers at a cost of $150m. The roots of the orgaisation go back to 1946, and included work by Douglas Engelbart in 1968 on pioneering human/computer interfaces, like the mouse. It began work on a military version of a ‘personalised assistant that learns’ in the earlies noughties.

Eventually the Siri app was spun out in 2008 to make money for the project, which is when $24m in venture money was invested. When it sold to Apple for $200m, (give or take $50m) that netted an eight-fold return for the VCs, Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.

Jobs explained last week that this deal is about artificial intelligence. Search, but not as we know it. xconomy explains:

“It’s about the artificial-intelligence insights behind it: the chain of machine-learning, natural-language processing, and Web search algorithms that swing into action with every Siri query. When you can access these algorithms from a mobile device like the iPhone, and prime them with a bit of contextual awareness such as a GPS location reading or an understanding of the user’s preferences, you have a powerful personal tool that Norman Winarsky, SRI’s vice president of ventures, licensing, and strategic programs, likes to describe as a “do engine” rather than a search engine.”

The result – and this is fascinating stuff – will be consumers interacting with their phones in a conversational way, rather than being tied to the conventional keyword searches.

Why is voice command important?

Voice-command technology is an extremely important tool for mobile. It’s hands-free, but essentially just far more practical than typing and means your eyes don’t have to be glued to the screen. If you’ve ever tried using your phone while walking (and of course you have) you’ll know how important that it. Other solutions, like Type n Walk, are more a gimmick than a real solution.

From calling up contacts in your address book to searching the web, voice commands give an entirely new and virtual interface with your phone, and it seems right that the challenge of streamlining and organising that interface would appeal to Apple. It may eventually lead to a entirely voice-controlled mobile, freed from the constraints of a keyboard size. And that means mobiles can get really small, saving those delicious touchscreens for desktops and notebooks.

iPhone already has voice command. I know this because the voice command appears occasionally, like a genie from a lamp, when I sit on my phone. (Holding down the main call button, as it turns out.) But voice control has yet to really impress – especially in the UK, where it only seems to work properly if you use an American accent, and that’s not even stating to think about the task of developing international language versions. What does that leave? It leaves a field ripe for improvement, and for a mainstream consumer solution. Step in, Apple.
 
In keeping with Apple’s product release strategy, expect to see voice search gently expanded. First, there will be the announcement of an improved search built in to the phone, a simple version that will encourage and train us to use it. Further models will make that more and more central to the device.

And in five years, maybe that iPod Shuffle-sized iPhone Voice will be announced. You just know that’s where things are headed.


Photo by SAYER© on Flickr. Some rights reserved

More speculation

Apple analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray confirms Apple will focus on mobile-centric search, presenting very specific competition to Google. They put the likelihood of Apple developing a search engine at 70%.

“An iPhone specific search engine could be a difficult undertaking, but we feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine… One hurdle for Apple in developing its own search engine would be generating enough advertiser interest to form a competitive marketplace; however, we believe the rationale for an Apple search product is to protect data rather than generate profit.”

Venture capitalist and former tech journalist Steve Allsopp explains, at around 2:00, why search is relevant to Apple and why they are embedding Siri into “everything they do”:

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, deal, free, google, iphone, lg, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sim, sol, Touch, uk, update, venture

But how do they compare with the other networks? And how do they compare with previous prices?

Vodafone has – oops! – leaked details of its iPhone 4 pricing. Which, since you can pre-order them from Tuesday 15th, means that it’s not much of a leak, but on the other hand you’d think the networks might have got their pricing out earlier.

The numbers were accidentally leaked by Vodafone and captured from its datasheets by Engadget (whence we’ve copied them) reader Liam Gladdy, and we’ve got them here now for you.

Note that the white version seems to be the 16GB one, and the black one is your 32GB one. Pore over the details and tell us your thoughts.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, gadget, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, phone, phones, prices, sol, uk, vodafone