Archive for: May 13, 2009

TV on the iPhone? Bring it on! PCMag's Zach Honig gave the long-anticipated SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone ($29.99 at the App Store) a test run.

Though he found a lot to like in (the app's interface has been polished for the iPhone, for example, plus that whole TV-on-the-iPhone thing), he has a significant amount of criticisms as well. At Apple's insistence, the app works only over Wi-Fi--3F and Edge connections aren't supported--and Zach experienced connection issues.

Get all the testing details and find out the SlingPlayer's final score in the SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone review at PCMag.com.

Following yesterday's announcement about a new Reuters app, Handmark has now unveiled Express News, a free Android app that aggregates top news stories on the mobile Web without having to use a browser.
Express News currently contains over 150 news feeds from the Associated Press, AFP, and Canadian Press, among others, and works in eight languages. News is divided up into topics such as U.S. news, World News, strange news, and so on.
Handmark is gearing up for a formal press campaign this coming Monday, but you can try it now by downloading it from Handmark's online app store.

In a finding that could alter the landscape for both mobile apps and cell phone advertising, Google has released data from a study that suggests owners of smartphones like the iPhone and the Android-powered T-Mobile G1 have different mobile search patterns than owners of other cell phones, according to MediaPost.
The results "suggest that iPhone searches mimic computer-based search behavior in terms of query length -- about three words per query for computer and iPhone queries, as opposed to 2.5 words per query for conventional cell phones," the report said--indicating that searchers on high-end phones are beginning to mimic computer-based searchers.
It seems like a small difference, but it's consistent--and it adds up. Plus, it's true not only for query length and diversity, but also for repeat search behavior, Google employee Maryam Kamvar said in the article. "These trends on the high-end phones indicate to us that mobile search is starting to really 'work.' In other words, mobile search is a viable means for users to find information." Specifically, the study found that the average number of words per iPhone query to be about the same as in computer queries, with slightly fewer characters per query. "On average an iPhone query consists of 2.93 words and 18.25 characters. The length of conventional mobile phone queries is the shortest of all the media, with an average query consisting of 2.44 words and 15.89 characters. That is a slight increase from the average of 2.35 words per query reported in the most recent analysis of mobile queries," the report said.

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Every summer, a panel of PCMag editors and analysts evaluates thousands of Web sites for our annual Top 100 Web Sites feature, and we could use your help. Now through the end of May, send us the URLs of your favorite Web sites and we'll add them to our list of nominations to consider.

We'll be putting two lists together—a list of classic sites and a list of "undiscovered" sites—with the winning sites being selected by our editorial committee instead of a popularity-driven reader-voting process. Whether a nominated site has millions of visitors or ten visitors, we'll consider it during our selection process; if it's awesome, it's in. (For more details, read up on our selection process, and see our 2008 lists of Top Web Sites.)

For your favorite sites to be considered, all you have to do is send the URLs to topwebsites@pcmag.com. Feel free to include a brief description, but please don't include any attachments. We'll be accepting nominations through the end of May, and your nominations are welcome whether you're affiliated with a site or are just a fan. Good luck!

If Lisa Madigan is to believed, you might have to get your online erotic kicks elsewhere, starting very soon.

Madigan, the Illinois Attorney General, told AP that Craigslist has agreed to remove its "Erotic Services" section. It will be replaced by an adult category that will feature ads reviewed and approved by Craigslist staff.

Current Erotic Services ads will expire in 7 days.

The section made headlines recently after a man was arrested for killing a girl he met through Erotic Services. Madigan last month called for Craigslist to remove it from its Web site, as did several other AGs. Craigslist officials met with the AG in New York City recently and pledged to tweak the section, but made no promises at the time to remove it completely.

Craigslist did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but at this point, there is no longer an option to post to "erotic services." Instead, Craigslist has a link to an adult section, which costs $10 per post.

"New 'adult services' ads will be reviewed in the order received for compliance with posting guidelines and the craigslist Terms of Use," according to a note on the site.

Once submitted, the ads cannot be edited. In the future, Craigslist will add the ability to re-post the same ad for $5.

Hip-hop's king of brokenhearted auto-tune ballads and the Caps Lock key, Kanye West, has spoken out against his fake presence on Twitter, and the micro-blogging site has responded by taken down the would-be West. The real Kanye wrote a typically all-caps post on his blog, railing against @kanyewest,

DON'T HAVE A F****** TWITTER... WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I'M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I'M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I'M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I'M NOT AND I'M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN'T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON'T HAVE A F**** TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS.

[The asterisks are ours--the caps and SICs are the real Kanye's.]

Those attempting to read the fake Kanye's Twitter posts will be greeted with the following message: "Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity."

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today announced a small fix to the micro-blogging site's @ reply feature. The change, which, according to Stone was arrived at after following "usage patterns and feedback" now syndicates the @ replies of those you follow only if they've responded to another person you follow, thereby lessening the possibility of receiving random replies in your feed.

Despite the change, references to other Twitter users with the @ reply (i.e. "You know who's rad? @bheater, that's who) will still show up in your feed, so long as they aren't simply a reply to another person's tweet.

OneRiot today relaunched as a real-time, people-powered search engine that uses link-sharing on Twitter and Digg to determine relevance. It's cooler that it sounds.

Instead of crawling and indexing the entire Internet Google-style, OneRiot indexes only Web pages that are shared on Twitter and Digg, and uses the number of shares of a URL to determine how high it will rank in the search results. As a news article, blog post, or video gets passed around, it gains search relevance.

This nifty approach to search offers you a sifted, curated version of the Web that OneRiot hopes will be more useful than the version Google offers, in which an article's relevance is determined by factors such as inbound links, placement of your search terms, and site authority. OneRiot's method definitely excludes a lot of good content simply because it hasn't been shared yet, but it also presents you with results that have already been approved by a community.

For instance, search on "Swine Flu" in Google, Twitter Search, and OneRiot and you'll get very different results. Google's top results are the most authoritative (cdc.gov, Wikipedia, etc.). Twitter Search's results tend to be a random assortment of jokes, links, and comments. OneRiot's whole first page of results are news articles that were shared in the past couple hours, so it's much more up-to-date than Google, and more targeted and relevant than a general Twitter search.

There are a couple other nifty tricks that OneRiot can pull off. Enter an article URL in the search box to get a report on the number of Diggs and Twitter shares, and who shared it on those sites. You'll also find out who shared the ...

Google still has yet to bring its browser Chrome to the Mac OS X. But for those who just can't wait for a final product, there's now a downloadable version of Chromium, the open-source basis for Google for Apples computers.

The latest build of the app 15752 is, according to CNET, is still a bit buggy and far from being complete. Several new versions arriving on a daily basis. While it's not finished yet, the downloadable version of Chromium offers a quick--if very imperfect--way for Mac users to get their Chrome fix before Google rolls out something more final.

SeeqPod is one of those sites that exists in the legal gray area of copyright infringement, searching for but not hosting MP3s and other multimedia files. The company has been targeted by EMI and Warner, and last month filed for Chapter 11 and began selling licensed copies of its code.

According to the company's CEO, Kasian Franks, SeeqPod is currently working on selling itself off, piece by piece. Microsoft has been listed among prospective buyers. Franks says that the company has been in talks with Redmond for the past year about selling off SeeqPod's assets. Microsoft, meanwhile, is refusing to comment on the possible deal.

Handmark, the mobile game, apps and storefront publisher, has announced the release of a new one-click BlackBerry app that connects directly to Thomson Reuters' business news, photography, market data and financial information.

The app offers news stories from various categories, full articles and photos, selectable regions  for the U.S., Canada, UK, and India, up-to-the-minute market data, personalized stock tabs, and customized news feeds. Users can also download offline data for viewing whenever there is no cellular signal.

The free Thomson Reuters mobile app is available now via Handmark's Web site, but I found it easier to just go to reuters.com/bb from the BlackBerry's Web browser. There are separate versions for BIS BlackBerrys and BES. The app will also soon be available in BlackBerry App World.

Recently, Handmark unveiled its own mobile store platform for handset manufacturers to use to create mobile app storefronts.

Nightline and Twitter are sitting in a tree, t-w-e-e-t-i-n-g. The prime-time news program announced today that it is adding a supplementary online show based on its relationship with the micro-blogging service. The oddly named "NightTline" (the extra "t" presumably stands for Twitter) will air Wednesdays at 12:30 P.M., Eastern Time.

Available through ABCNews.com, the half-hour show is hosted by Nightline correspondents and aimed at "provid[ing] a forum for viewers to simultaneously discuss and debate the news of the day through the prism of Twitter." The first episode, which airs tomorrow, is on the subject of torture.

It's a goofy idea, sure, but it may be worth watching just to hear respectable Nightline reporters forced to say "OMFG" out loud.