Archive for: November 25, 2009
November 25, 2009
 ACCESS is still around, despite the slow, sad death of Palm OS. So how's this for awesome: The company has just released Garnet VM Beta 5 for certain Nokia Nseries smartphones--specifically, the tablets. That means Nokia N810, N800, and N770 owners can run Palm OS apps in a virtual session within Symbian Series 60. The emulator works with over 30,000 Palm OS apps, including Google Maps, Snappermail, Bejeweled, Pocket tunes, Kinoma Player 4 E, and Sudoku. The company is claiming 80 percent compatibility validation with hundreds of best-selling Garnet OS apps, and is soliciting feedback from users. The emulator requires 3.5MB of RAM and 16MB of storage; it offers plenty of customization options and works with HotSync synchronization.
    
Last week I wrote a column for PCMag discussing the state of Apple's iPhone vetting process. In the piece, I stated, "No one but Apple knows precisely how many apps have been rejected." The creator of App Rejections responded this week, saying, "[My site] can't answer that question--but it can go a long way towards answering the other questions that developers have."
Fair enough.
App Rejections aggregates those apps that have been weeded out by Apple's notoriously tight grip on App Store content. The blog features the name of the rejected app, Apple's justification for rejection, and then an editorial comment.
The site seems designed to serve as a cautionary tale for prospective App Store developers. It's also a interesting look at the sometimes seemingly arbitrary rules that govern Apple's process.
 
What's the most influential site on the Web? Wikipedia, according, to "Influencing Indexing" site, ://URLFAN. The crowd-sourced reference site beat out other top ten heavy hitters like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and The New York Times.
://URLFAN is a Technorati-like site that ranks Websites basted in "influence." The site ranks some 3,783,534 sites based on citations from 302,023,552 blog posts. YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Google round out the top five.
 
Google has just made it easier for owners of iPhones, Palm Pres, and Android-powered handsets to locate movie times in their area. Finding movies is now as simple as visiting Google.com on a mobile browser, searching for "Movies," and the clicking the More Movies link.
The page displays theaters and show times in the user's vicinity. It also offers movie trailers, posters, ratings, and categories. Clicking on a movie title will bring up a synopsis, cast and crew listings, pictures, and more show times.
 
 Telemarketing calls and cold calls are annoying, but they're even worse when you get them on your mobile phone. Unfortunately, any organization that you may have done business with once has the ability to claim that is has an "existing business relationship" with you, which gives it the right to call your cell phone until you tell it not to. Even adding your number to the national Do Not Call list applies only to businesses: Charities and political campaigns still reserve the right to call you up for donations. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you find yourself hounded by regular calls from organizations that don't leave voice-mails or won't take no for an answer, Call Control for the Blackberry may be the app for you. The app matches incoming callers against a blacklist or whitelist before your phone rings and then decides whether to pass it through to you.
Call Control is from the folks behind EveryCall.us, a crowd-sourced Web database of telemarketer numbers and other annoying organizations that call behind hidden lines, don't leave voice messages to tell you who they are, or cold call you to solicit your business. If you discover a new telemarketing number, you can add it to the community database at EveryCall.us, and Call Control will automatically check against it the next time you get a call. The developers of the app have made it very easy to report a bad number through the app on your Blackberry.  The app not only checks ...
Our Favorite Blogs is one of my favorite PCMag stories of the year—and not just because I write it. Unlike our annual "Top 100 Websites" list, we go into the blogs story with an eye toward subjectivity. These aren't necessarily the "best" blogs, they're just our favorites. That leaves plenty of space for the weird, niche, and largely undiscovered blogs.
With that in mind, we stretch beyond our usual tech confines, pulling sites from subjects such as science, fashion, comics, cars, animals, monsters, design, books, modding, music, art, sports, storytelling, and shopping. One site teaches you how to make gourmet dishes out of fast food. Another documents strange and terrible library books.
And yes, there's even a cat blog in the mix. We had a quota to fill.
 
Live Nation and iTunes on Tuesday kicked off a new music program that will provide users access to live audio and video footage from concerts recorded at Live Nation venues.
The offering kicked off today, and currently has recordings from OK Go, Jesse McCartney, Saving Abel, A Fine Frenzy, Duffy, Plain White T's and Ziggy Marley available for download. Others will be added in the future.
Apple has added a section on iTunes specifically for this Live Nation content.
"We are thrilled to offer artists a new high-quality platform to share the magic of their live shows with their fans," Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation, said in a statement.
 
Ah, 2007, when online video sites like Joost and Veoh were poised to take over the world. Now, two years later, both have seen their fortunes falter. Adconion Media Group, an ad network, quietly purchased "certain assets" of Joost, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Although the site's video technology may end up being reused elsewhere, Joost as a video network is most likely dead at the hands of Hulu and others, which signed the right content deals for the right price, at the right time. "Video is a top priority for our company," Tyler Moebius, chief executive of Adconion, said in a statement.
"Through the acquisition of the Joost assets we will be able to provide
advertisers, content owners and website publishers with an end-to-end
global video platform and cross-channel video and display ad-serving
solution." Veoh continues to soldier on, and the site does have a nice range of content (in checking it out, I was sucked into a collection of the Animatrix videos). I do wonder, though, if some of these older video sites will end up as the back corners into which old TV shows and movies get swept, sort of like the TV channels that show little more than old 'Home Improvement" reruns.
 
Yahoo has enhanced its search toolbar to provide more in-depth suggestions when users are typing in a query. The update applies to movies, sports, travel destinations, and stock prices. Type in "Barcelona," and a drop-down menu also provides links for things to do, hotels, and a restaurant guide, in addition to regular search result suggestions. Type in "New Moon," and the menu provides links to showtimes, trailers, and reviews.
These search assist features also provide real-time financial information. Type in Yahoo's stock symbol YHOO and the drop-down menu provides its current status, as well as links to a larger chart and news about the company.
Want sports information? Search assist provides news, a game log, and scores and schedules for your favorite athlete. The toolbar alsos provide quick access to your inbox by typing "Yahoo Mail."
 
Google on Tuesday added the ability to view Gmail attachments while offline.
"Starting today, attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images)," Google wrote in a blog post. "Just add the attachment and send your message."
Google unveiled an offline version of Gmail in January. Built on Google's Gear's platform, the feature downloads a cache of your mail to your PC. When you're logged on the Web, it syncs the cache with the Gmail servers.
To enable on your account, visit the Labs tab in Gmail, select "enable" next to Offline Gmail, and save. After your browser reloads, click the "offline" link near your username to start the offline set-up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
Google, meanwhile, wants to see you using offline Gmail in action - from an igloo, a plane, a submarine, anywhere. Email submissions to hikingfan@gmail.com and Google will post the most interesting ones on its blog.
 
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Research in Motion has unveiled a public beta version of its new eBay for BlackBerry app. The new app lets users search, buy, pay for, and check the status of eBay auctions on the go.
