This article is based on theories in which I’ve presented to people before certain sites took what was an idea and called it their own. I’m basing a couple of the features/products within based on speculation and possible rumors in which have happened in the past and ones we’ll surely hear in the close future when it comes to the Mythical Facebook Phone…
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about GameStop’s next moves into mobile gaming. It’d be stupid for them, as a company, to not recognize the huge amount of users who are doing their mobile gaming on their smartphones, tablets, and of course, the iPod Touch. This market has grown exponentially as of lately, easily passing the likes of the Nintendo DS and Playstation’s PSP and Vita systems. Tablets are also popular platforms for mobile gaming, whether they be Android or iPads, and GameStop has been on the move to start stocking and selling these products as soon as they can.
After starting to take trade-ins for things like iPods and iPads, GameStop has announced that they are planning to start selling pre-loaded Android tablets in over 1600 stores across the country. These tablets are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Acer Iconia A100, and the Asus Transformer. All of these devices are very noteworthy for performance, and if I had to recommend someone an Android tablet, it would very likely be one of these three. Evidently GameStop agrees because they have decided to sell them, preloaded with games free of charge, to any customers who would like to take advantage of mobile gaming on a bigger screen.
Source: Pocket Gamer
Yahoo, a company with a brand new CEO, Ross Levinsohn, is shutting down it’s News stand that it started just months ago. In an application I nor many of you have ever heard about Livestand, was supposed to be Yahoos response to Flipboard which like many of Yahoo’s recent projects has failed. In an attempt to turn the company around Levinsohn is trying to streamline what the company does.
While we received great feedback on Livestand’s design and it earned a 4-star rating in the App Store, we committed ourselves to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t. We have learned a lot from Livestand and are actively applying those insights toward the development of future products that are better aligned with Yahoo!’s holistic mobile strategy.
Regan Clark mentions on Yahoo’s Blog. While never making any inroads or showing any interest in Android, Yahoo is said to be wanting to push full steam ahead with Mobile, as seen with it’s recent launch of Axis.
Nvidia just held their annual investor meeting. They unveiled a lot of plans for the remainder of 2012 and for the beginning of 2013.
Nvidia General Manager Mike Rayfield said that we will see 30 devices utilizing the Nvidia Tegra 3 chip set and it’s 4+1 core architecture. That’s compared to the 15 devices with Tegra 2 chip sets that were released in 2011.
One of the biggest issues with the Nvidia chip is it’s ability to play nice with 4G/LTE radios. Their Icera 410 LTE modem was just certified for use on AT&T’s 4G/LTE network. They will eventually replace the Icera 410 with the Icera 500 soon.
What’s even better news for Nvidia is that they will release a bundled chip with the Icera 500 and the Tegra series processor. The bundled chipset will be known as “Grey”. The first Grey devices will be released in 2013, most likely at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January or Mobile World Congress in February.
source: PhoneArena
In a move that makes as much sense as buying a company for $1 billion only to release an application just like it weeks later, rumor has it Facebook is looking to buy Opera. Facebook, which is now having to go before the SEC over how it handled its IPO is rumored to want to buy the Browser. Facebook which listed Mobile as a major interest in it’s IPO filing is quickly pushing full steam ahead to build it’s Mobile footprint. Which the acquisitions of Lightbox, Instagram and others Facebook looks to be pushing forward to the often rumored and mythical Facebook Phone.
With getting closer and closer to 1 billion users, having a browser will no doubt send shock waves in what is already a fierce battle between Google with Chrome and Microsoft with Internet Explorer. With the addition of a browser, rumored Application store, buying/built a Camera interface with Instagram and it’s own newly released iOS application, Lightbox for gallery. The only thing left for a full on blitz is an operating system. However after seeing what Amazon did with the Kindle, could a Forked Android version be what Facebook is soon to be looking at building or would buying RIM for it’s Blackberry OS finally push FB into building it’s own phone.
Source: Pocket-lint
Groupon the daily deals site is reportedly interested in entering the Mobile Commerce field to compete with the likes of Square and most recently PayPal. The company who is embroiled in controversy in almost anything it does, from how it reports it’s profits to how it stock raises, wants to handle your money.
Business Insider is reporting that it’ll charge 1.8% transaction fee and a $0.15 per transaction charge for payments that they process. Whereas Square charges 2.75% with no per transaction fee and PayPal Here charges 2.7%, also with no transaction fee. In a risky move, Groupon will provide not only the device that retailers can charge customers, but also an iPod Touch to take the payments with. Like Yahoo, which recently made waves by releasing a semi browser for the web, and an iOS application, Groupon which keeps failing and is being mishandled would rather throw as many things against a wall and see what sticks versus fixing what’s wrong and instead is trying to hide from this.
Source: Business Insider
Eerily close to their acquisition of the hit photo-sharing app, Instagram, Facebook has just launched a new photo-sharing app for iPhone called Facebook Camera. Facebook Camera is what you would expect it to be–an app that allows you to take pictures and add them to Facebook. This may seem simple enough, so much so in fact, that it is unnecessary to have, however, there are a few features that make it much easier to use than the iOS camera or just the Facebook app itself.
Facebook Camera has a completely new UI from what we have come to know in the official app, and it is actually very intuitive and easy-to-use. You can view a very streamlined version of your Facebook news feed that shows all of the photos your friends have uploaded and tagged, and you can also view their profiles (profiles only show pictures as well. When viewing your “me” stream you can scroll through your camera roll and pick the photos you would like to upload. You can add up to 15 effects to each photo, crop them, tag them, and upload up to 30 at a time. This is what sets this app apart from other photo uploading apps. When you have a ton of photos to upload via mobile, Facebook Camera would definitely be the quickest and easiest way to do so, that is, if you use Facebook. You can take pictures directly from the app, however, for some reason you can’t actually delete them. The app did just launch today though, so it’s understandable that they have a few things to work through.
Facebook Camera is a pretty nice app and if used for its strong points, can really be productive to have installed. It is a little strange that they launch this app right after the Instagram acquisition, but that was a pretty out-of-nowhere purchase to begin with, and it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that the team working on Facebook Camera had no idea it was going to happen. Either way, it’s here, so be sure to check it out in the App Store and let us know what you think in the comments.
Google has finally updated their Android app to follow the model of the iOS version they released to make the mobile experience “more beautiful.” Many Android users were pretty jealous to see the beauty iOS users were beholding, and they now can finally have it themselves. With some glitches though, the tablet version is still a little lacking as seen below. Most of the update takes what was a bland boring application and just makes it pop with the photos and posts, as well as some other major updates that we’ve all been waiting for and hoping for.
Yahoo, tonight is launching what they are calling a “Chrome Killer”. But there is a problem, as you can see right now you can download a plugin to use it on…guess what? Chrome.
I don’t get it either. As of now, when you go to axis.yahoo.com you are able to “Download it now”(Chrome Extension) view a video of it or see an ad for it. While having a new choice in browsers is nice, I’m still not sure why Yahoo will try something else it’ll fail at instead of fixing their problems they have now. Visually, it looks good until you realize how much quicker Chrome is to use, and return to using it.
Good news for Google and Android fans everywhere, the jury of the Google vs Oracle case has finally made a decision. The verdict, which was actually unanimous, was that Google is not infringing on Oracle’s patents, and that they are perfectly fine to use their API’s in Android’s coding. Oracle began the lawsuit in 2010 when they acquired Sun Microsystems, and Google had been using Java in Android before the deal happened. Google defended themselves by saying they weren’t aware of the patents they were allegedly infringing on, and that their operating system was also free to license.
Oracle didn’t believe this to be true obviously, but the jury decided they did today. After asking a technical question about the legal definition of certain phrases within the patents themselves, the jury was again in deliberations and decided on a verdict 30 minutes later. Google made the following statement about the win: “Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem.” This is definitely a big step for Google in the many patent woes they have encountered with Android, but sadly, not everything has been cleared up for Android. Apple and Samsung are still going at it, and patents continue to be a problem for one of the world’s largest mobile OS’s.
Source: CNET
The mobile industry was taken by storm with the news of Google acquiring Motorola Mobility last year. This brought together Google, the company who created and produces the Android OS that we all know and love, and Motorola, one of the top Android manufacturers with several highly successful devices including the original DROID which launched Android 2.0.
There were some issues though, as a lot of analysts were predicting that this acquisition would have some trouble getting cleared. It also spawned the ideas of other Android OEM’s such as Samsung, HTC, and LG having much worse relations with Google and Motorola, and that Google could possibly play favorites with their new hardware company. These rumors were soon put to rest by Google, Motorola, and the other manufacturers themselves. This brought the reason for the acquisition to light, that the main reason Google acquired Motorla Mobility was for patents. With Apple constantly giving Android device manufacturers trouble with things like patents, there couldn’t have been a better idea than to stock up on patents through the Motorola acquisition.
A few months back, both the US and Europe cleared the deal for the two companies, and now the last thing standing in Google’s way has as well. China has also cleared the acquisition which means the two companies will be able to finally make this thing official very soon. In fact, Google has released a statement saying that they should finalize things as early as next week, and Motorola Mobility will officially be a part of Google.
Source: Engadget
Two days ago we reported on how Pirate Bay, the leading site for illegal torrents was being attacked by DDoS attacks. However, at the time no one including Pirate Bay knew who the attack was coming from. Leading votes where from the MPAA, RIAA or a Government, after Anonymous claimed it wasn’t them. That’s when the thought came to me that It could be someone(team) that has defected from the collective and that’s what it turned out to be.
Apple, taking a page out of Twitters arsenal and censoring things it doesn’t like has added another one. The word JailBreak will no longer be found in the iTunes store. For those that don’t know, Jailbreaking: iOS jailbreaking, or simply jailbreaking, is the process of removing the limitations imposed by Apple on devices running the iOS operating system through the use of custom kernels.
So with Apple, not liking the fact that people pay hundreds of dollars, or even body parts, to own not rent/barrow the device. They are trying to get rid of any and all evidence about such products. So besides Applications being disallowed for political reasons into the iTunes store, any mention of Jailbreaking will now be as well.
Source: Cult Of Mac
Earlier this year frequent flyers started an insane amount of buzz around the laws that prohibit you from using your electronic devices during taxi, take off, and dissent. The reason behind this was the fact that many airlines are switching to iPad based flight manuals. Logic would have you ask, if the pilots’ iPad’s aren’t interfering with the flight, why would mine.
Of course, any person with a little common sense realizes that if one cell phone could actually interfere with the flight controls, there would be a more finite ban of those devices on commercial airlines.
Now it’s been reported that Virgin Atlantic will start offering in-flight, use your own cell phone, calls on flights using their Airbus A330 planes, from London to New York. The airline plans on adding more flights as well. They plan on adding 17 planes and ten different routes, this year.
The in flight mobile calling will be provided by AeroMobile which is partly owned by Panasonic. According to digitaljournal, the inflight calls will cost around the same price as a traditional roaming call. I know who actually has roaming charges these days?
source: DigitalJournal
Nick Tippmann
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