Archive for: November 4, 2009

Google has added mobile reporting its analytic bag of tricks. Now developers can track the usage of their iPhone and Android apps through the standard Google Analytics site, including traffic and app engagement.

Google outlined the new feature over on its mobile blog, writing,

Since mobile apps don't contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger pageview requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app.

For more information on the new features, check out the full Mobile blog post.

The iTunes App Store hit yet another milestone today when the company announced that developers have now created more than 100,000 applications for the mobile storefront.

"The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world," Apple exec Philip Schiller said modestly of the number. "The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating."

Since launch, the world's 50 million plus iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded more than two billion apps. Apple hasn't revealed how many of the 100,000 are variations on iFart, so we'll just have to guess ourselves.

You love free music, right? Of course you do. Google and Lala are using the lure of free tracks to help promote their new joint venture, Google Discover Music. Users who visit the site can download free tracks from, Mos Def, Phoenix, Major Lazer, Tim McGraw, and Zee Avi.

Lala and Myspace will also be offering access to exclusive tracks from big name artists like Green Day, Snoop Dog, the Artic Monkeys, Lady Gaga, AFI, and Bon Jovi. The tracks can be accessed by typing the artist's name into Google search.

Who knew that fall was the season of the new homepage--CNN, PCMag, and now MSN have unveiled fancy new front pages this season. For its part, Microsoft says that its new pages is "the most significant redesign...in over a decade." It's also apparently "designed to be the best homepage on the Web."

So, what does it take to be "the best?" For starters, less clutter (are you listening, Bing?). Twitter and Facebook information also help, too--and, of course who can forget the built-in Bing search field, right?

Microsoft is in the process of rolling out the page to all of its users, in the meantime, eager parties can check out a preview over at http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx.

If you're not a huge fan of movie critics and reviewers and instead prefer the opinion of average movie-goers, who are a little easier to please and may find entertainment in more mundane films, TwitCritics can help. The service sources movie reviews from Twitter posts, scanning Twitter for movie titles and whether the movies were mentioned in a positive or negative light. The service then collects the percentage of good and bad mentions it has found and gives you a percentage of positive Twitter reviews, so you know whether the Twitter world, at least, enjoyed the film.

Admittedly, the Twitter community may not be the best judges of cinematic genius. But if you find yourself regularly enjoying films that professional critics hated, your tastes might be a bit more populist than those of newspaper movie reviewers. TwitCritics doesn't give more weight to one person's review than another's and doesn't harvest only the opinions of reviewers; it takes the pulse of everyone on Twitter to see whether the community as a whole found a particular film enjoyable or horrifying.

The service lists some of the most popular movies that are currently in theatres or have been recently on the front page, and you can click next to browse additional titles. Each movie's rank is listed next to its title. When you hover over the title, you see a selection of recent tweets about the movie and whether the service determined they were positive or negative comments.

Naturally, with a service as completely crowd-sourced as TwitCritics, you'll have to take the commentary with a grain of salt. The personal opinion of ...

Want to get under AT&T's skin? Make fun of the company's 3G coverage. The wireless provider on Tuesday filed suit against Verizon Wireless for what AT&T considers to be false and misleading advertisements.

Verizon has been running a series of TV and print ads that compare Verizon's 3G coverage with AT&T's. AT&T claims Verizon violated false advertising and deceptive trade laws and filed suit in Georgia district court in an effort to get the judge to pull the ads.

In one of the ads (above), a Verizon customer wanders around a college campus watching videos on a smartphone, as a map of Verizon's 3G coverage area--which covers the U.S. almost in its entirety--follows behind. The camera then flashes to an AT&T 3G customer, and the ad says, "If you want to know why some people have spotty 3G coverage, there's a map for that." The AT&T 3G coverage map pops up, with large sections of the country blank.

Another ad features a group of Verizon customers getting together at a restaurant while another friend--an AT&T customer--sits on a bench, presumably having missed a call from the others. "If you want to know why your friend's 3G coverage keeps her out of touch, there's a map for that," the ad said as the AT&T 3G coverage map appeared again.

AT&T said it contacted Verizon about the ads on October 7 and asked the company to remove them or make them more accurate. Verizon responded by removing the "out of touch" line and putting a "voice and data services available outside 3G coverage areas" line in small font at the end of the TV ads, but AT&T was not appeased.

"Verizon's purported solution has done nothing to change the misleading message in its advertisements. By ...

Imagine the flu pandemic getting really bad, and lots of people are home sick. What's the worst that could happen? That's right, everyone will be home telecommuting, clogging up the Internet, and securities exchanges won't have reliable Internet access.

The GAO, Congress's General Accountability Office, has conducted research into this impending crisis and has recommendations. These might involve blocking popular web sites and slowing down consumers in order to make way for the business of America, namely telecommuting.

According to the CDC, in a severe pandemic absentee rates could reach 40 percent. The GAO study presumes that everyone stuck at home with the flu would be watching Hulu and playing Xbox, rather than commuting between the bed and the bathroom. The result, so they say, would be a congestion storm on the Internet that would obstruct the more important work of, for example, the securities markets. The report spends quite a bit of time explaining how securities markets work and how they depend on reliable network access.

Yes, we're a bit skeptical of the scenario drawn out by the GAO report for reasons which we'll explain momentarily. But let's accept their worst-case scenario for the sake of analysis: The pandemic gets so bad that schools close, many offices close, many people avoid crowded places like subways and malls out of fear, and so on. Presumably they'll all be home.

In terms of what it will do to the Internet, you don't need a pandemic to envision such a situation. A big snowstorm will do. Is there any history of the Internet collapsing from a snow day in New York City? Not that I'm aware.

But you don't even have to go that ...

Want to simplify the process of creating online accounts? Google on Tuesday announced that it has finalized a two-step log-in process that lets you use your Google information to set up accounts on other Web sites.

At this point, if you get a Gmail message inviting you to Facebook, that link will take you to the social networking site and require you to set up an account. Google, however, has developed a process by which users who click on that link will be given the option to set up a Facebook account using their Google account information in two steps.

Google has been working on this process, dubbed hybrid onboarding, with Facebook and Plaxo in an effort to cut down on the number of passwords people have to use across the Web. The technique leverages a number of Internet standards, including OpenID, OAuth and Portable Contacts. Plaxo showed off the results of a trial effort in early 2009, but now the log-in option is available to all Web site owners, Google said.

"All of these hybrid onboarding techniques are based on industry standards that both Google and Yahoo support, and that other e-mail providers are beginning to support as well," Google wrote in a blog post. "At the same time, the hybrid onboarding model improves authentication security because websites like Plaxo that use this technique never see a password from you at all."

Google said the service is also being used by enterprise software-as-a-service vendors that want to eliminate the need for employees at their customers' businesses to create another password.

"In addition, after a thorough evaluation of the security and privacy of these technologies, the same techniques ...

eBay's payPal is currently streaming its PayPal X conference, which is Paypal's open API for developers. The PayPal X platform hasn't yet been announced, although The Wall Street Journal has a bit of a preview.

Here's the key quote: "With the new open software, called Paypal X, users won't have to type their username and password into a separate PayPal Web site in order to complete a payment. Instead, people will be able to sign into PayPal and make purchases, such as virtual weapons, right inside an application such as a game."

Amazon recently announced a passphrase feature, by which users can buy products and services at third-party sites through the passphrase and a third-party PIN.

Apple iPhone and Android smartphone owners can now get MobiTV's NBA League Pass Mobile, which offers NBA fans access to over 40 live games each week over both 3G or Wi-Fi connections.

In addition to the live game coverage, the app includes daily highlights, live player stats and scores for all games, the requisite alerts for favorite teams and upcoming games, and updates available over e-mail as well as on Facebook and Twitter, according to FierceMobileContent.

The app costs a whopping $39.99, though at least it's a one-time download--as compared to MobiTV's $9.99/month fee for its regular multi-channel service.

Opera Software has unveiled Opera Mobile 10 Beta for Nokia smartphones running Symbian Series 60. The new browser features a revamped design similar to that of the excellent Opera Mini 5 beta, which I reviewed two months ago.

Among the new features in Opera Mobile 10 are Speed Dial, which gives you a Safari 4-like window to your favorite Web sites on the home screen. Opera also optimized the new browser for touch screens and for keypad-style navigation.

The company claims to have doubled the speed of the previous S60 version, particularly when downloading pages, zooming, and panning. It's a free download at www.opera.com/mobile/next.

In the last couple of days, both Google with its Chrome browser and Mozilla with its Firefox have come out with new betas claiming still faster performance, so I figured, why not compare these sped-up new betas head-to-head.

Not to be blinded to everything else by speed, I should note that the browser versions add new capabilities in addition to performance. The new Chrome beta offers bookmark syncing, similar to what Opera has had for over a year with its Opera Link service. Meanwhile, the Firefox 3.6 beta, which was released last Friday night, incorporates Mozilla's Personas feature, which lets users customize the look of the browser with the click of a button. It also warns users about out-of-date plugins, and adds a number developer-focused capabilities, like more support for open web video, CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies, and the Web Open Font Format.

I decided to pit the latest Firefox 3.6 beta against the latest Chrome 4.0 beta, testing startup and SunSpider JavaScript performance times. I tested on a non-state-of-the-art Athlon dual-core running at 2GHz with 2GB RAM. I also turned off all unnecessary processes in Windows Task Manager, and ran the tests thrice and took the averages.

Here are my results:

 

 

Chrome 4.0.223.16 beta

Chrome 3

Firefox 3.6b1

Firefox 3.5

Internet Explorer 8

SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (lower is better)

762

775

1400

1772

9015

Warm startup time

0.7

0.9

1.2

1.5

1.3

Cold startup time

1

3.6

4.5

2

1.8

Memory use with 10 media-heavy sites loaded.

256MB

(not tested)

...