The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘source’

It took them four days, but Apple is finally explaining its surprise decision to remove nearly all “sexy” content from the App Store. Once again, the morsels of information come from Apple SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller, who spoke with the New York Times for an article published earlier this evening. None of it is too surprising, but Schiller’s unconvincing explanation as to why some applications like Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit app and Playboy will be allowed to remain on the store is sure to anger plenty of developers.

So why did Apple decide to pull these sexy apps?

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see”

Which makes sense given the broad appeal of the iPhone, but Apple should have seen this coming, and it implemented parental controls for a reason. And then Schiller goes on to pour salt into the wounds of recently spurned developers with his explanation as to why a select few sexy applications will remain on the App Store.

“When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.”

So apparently exposed cleavage in a Playboy application is less offensive to women and parents because it’s also being printed in a magazine, or something. The decision really isn’t all that surprising, either — there’s little risk of the Playboy application trying to sneak in some extreme nudity, and with only a handful of mainstream sexy apps there’s much less clutter. Still, such favoritism sets another bad precedent for the App Store, and Schiller’s explanation just feels lame.

Of course, if you’re still looking for ’sexy’ content on your iPhone, you can still find plenty of nudity in iTunes (Apple has no problem selling R rated movies). Or you could just pop open Safari.

Monica Keller, a MySpace Group Architect who has played a key role in advancing MySpace’s initiatives in activity streams and openness, is leaving the company to join Facebook. Keller announced the news in a blog post this evening. She will be joining Facebook as an Open Source and Web Standards Program Manager, where she’ll be joining a team that includes David Recordon and Luke Shepard. MySpace confirmed that Keller had left the company but declined to comment further.

Keller played a key role in launching MySpace’s Real-Time Stream API, helping to design the Real Time Stream using PuSH and architecting the network’s Twitter Sync Ingest.  Keller was involved with the technical aspects of the Stream, and was also involved with the design of MySpace’s developer platform. She’s also represented MySpace on numerous conference panels.

While Keller has some nice things to say about the struggling company in her post, she clearly wasn’t pleased with the way some things were handled at MySpace:

But I have chosen to leave. While I was able to have some temporary creative freedom this is not the norm or part of what other engineers enjoy and I do not feel there is one cohesive push to deliver the best we can deliver anymore.

To my friends and colleagues at MySpace, some parting advice:

It is imperative that MySpace puts in place strong technical leadership who can attract good technical talent and make well-informed decisions. It is important that they stay connected to rest of the world and work on interoperable standards and solid products which benefit the end user. Many of my fellow engineers have fantastic ideas and a plan for phased delivery.

This is a loss for MySpace, but it certainly isn’t the end of their real-time and open initiatives (which have been more progressive than Facebook’s).  We hear that these are still being spearheaded by recently promoted MySpace co-president Mike Jones, and that Christina Wodtke, who recently joined the company after running the activity stream product at LinkedIn, is involved in running the team’s day-to-day operations.

Image by Adam Tinworth.

In not-too-surprising, yet good-to-know-for-sure news, it seems that Samsung is indeed working on a netbook designed around Chrome OS .

Read the original post:
Samsung: Yep, we’re working on a Chrome OS netbook

I don’t want to be a Fussy Freddy here but these new digital Rubik’s Cubes make it impossible to peel off the stickers and rearrange them.

Here is the original:
Rubik’s Slide offers 10,000 puzzles

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

Chomp, the iPhone app recommendation and discovery service that launched last month, is off to a good start. In its first 31 days, the company has gotten 150,000 users who have left a total of 1 million reviews. And today it’s launching Chomp Connect, a new feature that lets iPhone app developers integrate Chomp directly into their applications with a minimum amount of work.

Chomp invites users to leave reviews about the apps they’re using, and also features a ‘follow’ system where you can keep tabs on what your friends or Internet celebrities like Kevin Rose, who is on the service, are recommending. There’s also a recommendation feature that suggests more apps based on what you’ve liked in the past, similar to the way Netflix handles recommendations.

Until now users would leave their Chomp reviews in a standalone Chomp application (iTunes Link). WIth Chomp Connect, developers will be able to integrate Chomp’s review form into their apps with a few lines of code.  You can see what one of these integrated forms look like in the shot above.

CEO Ben Keighran says that this is appealing to developers because it allows them to prompt users to leave an app review while they’re actually using and hopefully enjoying an application — iTunes only prompts users to review an app when they’re uninstalling it, which probably isn’t the most opportune time from the developer’s perspective. The catch is that Chomp reviews don’t get syndicated to iTunes, so only other users on Chomp get to see them. That said, the more Chomp reviews an app gets, the more exposure it is given to other Chomp members.

Aside from Chomp, there are many other services looking to improve on Apple’s iPhone app discovery process, including Appolicious, AppsFire, and Chorus.

To say I know who Keith Urban is would be scandalous. I’ve since learned, in the six seconds of research done for this here post, that he’s something of a country music singer.

See the rest here:
Oh, now you don’t support music piracy? Sure, OK, Keith Urban, whatever you say.

In the movie Contact, when revealing to main character Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) that there is actually a second space travel machine that was being built at the same time as the first one, but in secret, S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) says, “why build one when you can have two at twice the price?” Apple, it seems, may have the same line of thinking.

By now, we’ve all seen the iPad and know just about everything about it that we possibly can. But did you know that the secretive company may actually be hard at work on a second device already? Now, before I say anything else, take this information with a grain of salt. While it originated from a good source, it was a second-hand source. Meanwhile, I’ve corroborated some the main details with another source, but not some of the smaller ones. That said, from what I’m hearing, Apple is pretty far along on work on second tablet device. A bigger one. And this one may be much more like a Mac than an iPhone.

Before the iPad was revealed last week, rumors circulated for a long time that Apple might be working on two different sizes for the screen of the device. Some had the device as small as 7″, others were saying it would go up to 10.6″. (The actual size of the iPad is 9.7″.) But the information we’re hearing is that Apple is thinking much larger for another version of the product, maybe all the way up to the 15.4″ size that it currently uses for one version of the MacBook Pro. If you think that would be way too big for an iPad, we’re also hearing that this other tablet would be quite a bit different from the one revealed last week. Namely, it could run a version of OS X much closer to the traditional version that runs on Macs.

If there is any truth to that, we could learn something as soon as Apple’s WWDC event this year, which will likely take place in June (just as it does every year). Apple typically uses the event to show off its new iPhone hardware, but it is first and foremost an event for Mac platform developers, and the past two years have seen OS X as a major component. This included two years ago when Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) made a surprise appearance and developers got a very early peek. There is already talk that WWDC 2010 could bring a similar peek at OS X 10.7. If there are some significant multi-touch components to OS X 10.7, you can expect the rumors to start flying about this new device that I’m talking about (or possibly touchscreen iMacs).

As usual, you should also note that Apple likely has a ton of projects in various stages that never see the light of day. It seems certain that at points they were playing with different sized screens for what became the iPad. But one of our sources here puts this new tablet as being released within the next year.

While everyone is still debating the uses of the iPad, a larger tablet would probably have a completely different set of uses. For example, it would likely be meant to be more of a straightforward laptop (or desktop) replacement. As such, it would almost undoubtedly come with some sort of external keyboard/stand just as the iPad offers as an accessory, but it would probably be a more integral part of using the device. When undocked, maybe you could use the thing just as you would an iPad (which is to say, holding it or placing it in your lap and using your fingers to manipulate its screen). And maybe while docked, you would even use a bluetooth mouse or touchpad device attached to the keyboard to interact with it.

Based on various patent filing and the general trend of multi-touch enabled devices (Magic Mouse, MacBook trackpads, etc) that Apple has been releasing, it seems that Apple is definitely trending in the direction of touch computing as the future of computing. A larger tablet device could serve as a nice transition device between the traditional laptop and this new type of computing. And just as the iPhone has prepared many of us to naturally use the iPad, the iPad may do the same for this new tablet.

And while a larger screen tablet would undoubtedly cost more than the iPad, Apple would have a lot of room to price it if it really was meant to be a laptop-replacement. If that’s the case, anything north of $1,000 wouldn’t seem unreasonable, unlike it would have for the iPad.

That said, for that type of price, people are going to expect a machine that is as powerful as a laptop. We’re also hearing that Apple would likely use an Intel chip (just as it uses in traditional Macs) in such a device rather than its new custom-made A4 chip. The problem with that would be power consumption. A larger screen plus a power-hungry chip would likely lead to a battery life well below the stated 10-hour limit for the iPad. Still, if they could bring something like that in with around around 5+ hours of battery, plenty of people would be happy. And Apple has made a lot of advancements in the past couple of years with getting battery life on its laptops well above industry averages.

In terms of weight, the iPad is 1.5 pounds, while the MacBook Air is 3 pounds (with a 13.3″ screen). If Apple could remove all the unnecessary parts of the MacBook Air (like the keyboard and trackpad), it could probably keep a device pretty close to the 2-3 pound weight even with a larger screen. But given such a large screen, it would almost undoubtedly have to come with some kind of case to put it in so as not to damage the screen when in transit.

In terms of what OS X applications could or would support multi-touch integration, that’s hard to say. Safari is an easy and obvious one, but others would have to be completely reworked for this. But as we saw during the iPad keynote, Apple didn’t need too long to do that with its iWork suite of apps. Third-party developers would likely get a good set of tools from Apple to update their apps as well. Again, take this all with a grain of sale, but look for clues in OS X 10.7.

[image: Steve Burg]

Maybe the single most useful feature of Gmail for me is how you can “star” items to highlight them to come back to later. In Google Reader, this starring feature also exists and is hands-down the best feature of the service. Today, Google News added the same feature, and it’s also awesome.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of Google News. In fact, I think it’s pretty awful in many ways. But this is a great addition. Much like with Google Reader, I can now scan through Google News and pick out the stories I want to save to read later simply by clicking on the empty star icon to the left of the headline. Even better, by using these stars, Google News is actually able to better tailor its news surfacing experience for you. When there is new news about a headline you previously starred, Google News will bold it for you, making it easier for you to find on a quick scan.

There are a couple of downsides to this feature. Sadly, you can only star the story that Google News deems to be the most important in the cluster (that it places first). Clicking on a more detailed view removes the option to star any articles. Also, they say that you can only keep track of your last 20 starred items in the new Starred area — that seems pretty low. Also odd is that if the cluster changes after you star it (meaning a different story rises to the top), it appears to also change in your starred items area.

Still, this makes Google News much more interesting to me already.

[image: MGM]