The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘phones’

Wirefly.com is selling its entire stock of AT&T handsets for free after instant discount with a new two-year contract. Note that the store doesn’t sell iPhones, though. You’ll have to go to Best Buy or directly to AT&T for those

Read more: 
CrunchDeals: All AT&T phones free on Wirefly until midnight tonight

Solid state hard drives are increasing in popularity mainly because more are reaching the consumer market, therefore driving down prices. But most are still a bit pricey.

Originally posted here: 
Active releases a new set of SSDs

Pretty huge news in our book: Skype has published a free mobile application for Symbian in the Ovi Store, basically enabling over 200 million Nokia handset users to easily download the program and start making free Skype-to-Skype calls from their phones.

If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now - and / or infuriated.

Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform.

Google has just sent out an Email to select Android developers informing them that they are eligible to receive either a Verizon Droid or a Nexus One, as part of its ‘Device Seeding Program’.  The criteria for getting one of the phones is to have an application with 3.5 stars or higher and more than 5,000 downloads, which sounds like it could include quite a few developers.

In an odd move, Google isn’t actually allowing the developers to pick which device they’re receiving — if you’re in the US, you’ll get a Droid or Nexus One, at random. If you’re in Canada, the EU, Norway, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore, you get a Nexus One.  If you’re not in any of those, you don’t get a phone at all (Google explains that the phones aren’t certified in other countries).

So why is Google doing this? Android is already having to deal with fragmentation issues, as a large number of users (and developers) have older phones that aren’t running Android 2.0. Now that the Droid, which runs 2.0, comprises a big part of Android’s market share, it’s in Google’s best interest to make sure that Android’s best developers are building software that’s compatible with the latest devices. The free phones also serve as a nice carrot to entice developers to build quality applications.

Here’s the Email Google is sending out:

Due to your contribution to the success of Android Market, we would
like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our
developer device seeding program. You are receiving this message
because you’re one of the top developers in Android Market with one or
more of your applications having a 3.5 star or higher rating and more
than 5,000 unique downloads.

In order to receive this device, you must click through to this site,
read the terms and conditions of the offer and fill out the
registration form to give us your current mailing address so that we
can ship your device.

You will receive either a Verizon Droid by Motorola or a Nexus One.
Developers with mailing addresses in the US will receive either a
Droid or Nexus one, based on random distribution. Developers from
Canada, EU, and the EEA states (Norway, Lichtenstein), Switzerland,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore will receive a Nexus One. Developers
with mailing addresses in countries not listed above will not receive
a phone since these phones are not certified to be used in other
countries.

We hope that you will enjoy your new device and continue to build more
insanely popular apps for Android!

Update:: And here’s a followup statement from Google about the program (it’s real, for those of you who are worried that it’s a scam):

A thriving developer community is an important part of creating a better mobile experience for users around the world. We hope that offering devices to developers will make it easier for them to create and test great applications. This is inline with other efforts to support developers, which also includes our Android Developer Labs World Tour and our upcoming participation at the Game Developers Conference.

Last December, mobile data swapping startup Bump opened up its iPhone API in a small, private beta. Today, they’re opening the floodgates to everyone. Developers who implement Bump’s API can use it to transfer data between two nearby phones simply by asking users to tap their devices together — a feat that’s still remarkably difficult on most smart phones.

To kickstart its API launch, Bump held a contest that invited developers to work the API into their iPhone applications. You can see a gallery of the winners here. The winning apps include CheckOut, which lets you share gift cards with friends by tapping your phones together; CloudNote, which lets you swap digital Post-It notes; and SocialFuse, which allows you to connect on Twitter and LinkedIn with someone (again, by tapping your phones together). Be sure to check out the gallery page for a half dozen runners-up to get more ideas of what the API can do.

For many startups, an API is a nice way to build a community but isn’t necessarily a key to success. I don’t think that’s the case for Bump — its API will likely prove very important. Bump wants to become the way people are swapping their contact information, data, and even money when they’re standing next to each other. Bump can integrate that functionality into their own app, but the barrier to using the service would be much lower if it was built-in to a variety of other popular applications.

CEO David Lieb says that Bump issued 300 beta keys over the course of the private beta. And while the current API is iPhone only, an Android version is in the works — and it’s getting “an increasing number of requests”. Bump’s official mobile application, which is available on both iPhone and Android, is now closing in on 10 million downloads.

Google Voice is a great service, one of the best things Google has released in a long time. Unfortunately, most casual web users have no idea what it is. Or more specifically, what it’s purpose is. And in fact, there’s even still some confusion amongst heavy web users about whether Voice is VoIP, for example (it’s not — yet). So Google has today launched a series of videos to explain the service.

The first (embedded below) is a simple overview, “What is Google Voice.” The 11 others go into more detail about actual features such as the mobile app (as in, the one that actually works on the iPhone), how to block callers, sharing voicemails, personalized greetings, and connecting all your numbers to your one Google Voice numbers, among other things. You can find them all on this new YouTube page that Google has created (just in case you thought Microsoft were the only ones using YouTube for product promotion).

There is also a video describing voicemail transcription. My favorite part of this video is how Google skirts around how the vast majority of the voice transcriptions are in absolute gibberish. “Transcriptions aren’t perfect, but we hope they’re good enough to save you from listening to the message.” I have yet to experience that. Instead, here are some of my favorites that I’ve gotten just in the past couple of weeks:

With that fun. It’s but but. Thank you. Thanks Hello yeah, I don’t think you got the right number.

It’s important to you 8 technical alright. Call me. Troubleshooting just to okay.

Hi Angie, This is mcKayla I we met at the crash, 50 calling friends and I’d like for a check start.

Hands down, the best way to experience Google Voice is to let it take over the phone controls on your mobile device. Unfortunately, that only works on Android devices right now — and likely never will for the iPhone. Those of us with iPhones will have to settle for the web app version (which is still pretty nice).

Over the last year or so, Facebook has been gradually ramping up its Credits system, which for a long time was used just to purchase virtual gifts (now you can use it to buy real gifts, songs, and it’s been integrated with some applications). Today comes news that will make it even easier to buy Facebook Credits: you’ll be able to buy them with PayPal.

The new partnership actually encompasses a few areas of Facebook’s payments. Along with Facebook Credits, you’ll be able to use PayPal to purchase Facebook Ads.

This is big news for both companies. PayPal has been trying to establish a greater presence in micropayments and on Facebook itself. And Facebook will now make it easier for PayPal’s 81 million users to quickly stock up on ads and buy its credits, which are only going to become more important on the site going forward. Other payment options for Facebook include standard credit cards and mobile phones (using Zong).

One other reason why this is interesting: given Facebook’s interest in extending itself beyond Facebook.com through services like Facebook Connect, it wouldn’t be surprising if it started prompting people to start “Paying With Facebook” on external sites, which would make it competitive with PayPal.  Given how nascent Facebook payments are this would likely be a long ways off (if it’s even coming).

Note: I made the image above, so the payment screen may look a bit different.

Last year Triggit, a startup that launched in early 2008, shifted gears to become one of the web’s first demand side advertising platforms. Triggit is part of a new movement in advertising that holds real-time auctions for individual ad impressions, which allows advertisers to better target which sites their ads appear on and who sees them. And today, Triggit has launched a new self-serve platform that it hopes will make running display advertising as easy as it is to run the text-based search ads that made Google a money-making machine.

Triggit launched this demand-side platform in October, but up until now it has been a ‘full service’ solution — in other words, you’d have to work directly with the company in order to manage your advertising campaigns through their system. Now anyone can sign up.

For those who aren’t familiar with these real time ad auctions, Triggit sits on top of a half dozen real time ad exchanges, which are offered by Google, Yahoo, and others. When these ad exchanges have an available impression they offer it, in real-time, to services like Triggit to see how much their clients are willing to bid for the ad impression. Triggit’s system automates this for their customers, allowing them to set rules around how much they’re willing to spend and where their ads should be shown.

The new self-serve signup form should be straightforward to anyone who has run an ad campaign before. You enter the maximum CPM you’re willing to spend on your ads, upload your creative, and if there’s a maximum number of times you’d like the ad to be shown to a given user, you can set a frequency cap.

There are also some advanced options for tracking ad conversions and retargeting. And Triggit’s tracking pixel can dynamically adjust an advertising campaign automatically — if the system detects that a certain site is performing better than others, it can start sending more impressions to that site. Other options include geotargeting, and the ability to whitelist or blacklist specific sites.

Google has acquired social search service Aardvark, says a source that has been briefed on the deal, for around $50 million. We first reported on the discussions between the two companies in December. Those discussions have now turned into a signed deal, says our source, and will be announced today or tomorrow.

Aardvark, founded by ex-Googlers, has raised around $6 million in venture capital to date. The service let’s users ask questions and get immediate responses from their friends and friends of friends.

Earlier this month the company published a research report that included some key stats about their business:

As of October 2009, Aardvark had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content (asked or answered a question). The site’s average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Interestingly, mobile users are more active than desktop users. The Aardvark team attributes this to users wanting quick, short answers on their phones without having to dig for anything. They also think people are more used to using more natural language patterns on their phones.

The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine.  Some of this difference comes from the more natural language people use (with words like “a”, “the”, and “if”).  It’s also because people tend to add more context to their queries, with the knowledge that it will be read by a human and will likely lead to a better answer.

98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.

87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes.  The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers.  70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.

86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer.  50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.

Back in July 2009, Twitter made a big stink about developers using the term “Tweet” in their Twitter apps. For instance, at the time, the Twitter API team contacted a third-party developer—TweetKnot—informing him that it had “grown uncomfortable” about the use of the word “tweet” in the app’s name. Well, that was , before the company effectively secured the trademark with the USPTO (which, notably, it still hasn’t).

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone promptly clarified the situation in a blog post, stating that it has “no intention of ‘going after’ the wonderful applications and services that use the word [tweet] in their name when associated with Twitter.”

However, contrary to that statement, it appears that Twitter is trying to take actions against TweetKnot’s use of the term on, of all places, Facebook. TweetKnot received a message yesterday from Facebook’s User Operations team in response to an infringement notice from Twitter which shows that it is still very much uncomfortable with developers using the term, or at least this particular developer.

This is the e-mail that was sent to developer of the TweetKnot application by the Facebook employee in question:

Hi Mallikarjun,

We have recently received the following email regarding your “TweetKnot” application. As you know, the Facebook Statement of Rights & Responsibilities (“Statement”) prohibits applications that infringe the intellectual property rights of a third party. If your application does contain infringing content, you must remove it immediately.

As you are solely responsible for the operation of your application, we request that you resolve this issue directly with the complaining party [REDACTED]@twitter.com within 48 hours. We reserve all rights in regard to this matter, including all of our rights under the Statement.

Thanks,

[REDACTED]
User Operations
Facebook

The e-mail that was referenced came in the form of an email attachment, and contained the following text:

Name: Brian Sutorius
Company: Twitter, Inc.
Mailing address: 795 Folsom St. Suite 600, San Francisco CA 94103
Phone number: [REDACTED]
Email address: [REDACTED]
Web address (URL) of the application: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=87531617948
Description of where the infringing content is located: The application’s name contains “tweet”
Description of developer contact:
I have sent a notice via the “Contact Developer” link on the application’s profile to no response.
Explain which rights are being infringed by each piece of reported content:
The application uses the Twitter marks without permission, causing confusion

The wording leaves little to the imagination: Twitter clearly still considers the term ‘tweet’ in app names an infringement of its trademark, even though that hasn’t been assigned to the company yet, according to USPTO filings.

We’re not sure what to make of this—we’ve contacted the company to see if there has effectively been a change in policy that could affect more third-party developers (TweetDeck, Tweetmeme, Tweetie and others spring to mind) down the line, or if there’s another explanation for this.

Photo Credit/Flickr/TPorter2006