Archive for: April 2010

TechCrunch is asking its readers if the tech blog should press charges against a hacker who disrupted its traffic in late January.

"Recently Garda (Ireland's national police force) and the U.S. Secret Service have been in touch with us because they think they found our man," editor Michael Arrington wrote in a Thursday post. "These law enforcement agencies now want to know if we want to press charges so that they can bring a criminal action against the suspect in the United States."

Rather than chat with his lawyers, however, Arrington is crowd-sourcing the decision to his usually vocal readers. "Whatever you decide, we'll do," he wrote. He posted chat logs from the alleged hacker, which describe the man's efforts to re-direct TechCrunch traffic in advance of Apple's iPad press conference.

As of 630pm Thursday night, TechCrunch readers want the hacker to face the music. Of the approximately 20,000 votes cast, 78 percent want TechCrunch to press charges, while 22 percent think the site should leave it alone. Arrington expressed surprise at the vote in the comments, saying he "thought the poll would be overwhelmingly 'no.'"

The hacker in question is currently a suspect in another case, which is how officials found the TechCrunch evidence.

How will GPS device makers compete with free apps from the likes of Google? Developing their own app stores, apparently. GPS company TomTom is readying an app store that will be ready by year's end, TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn told Pocket-lint.

TomTom's current infrastructure "wasn't good enough moving forward," Goddijn told the site, so the company will "move on to new architecture both on the device and the backend."

Goddijn did not provide an official date for the debut of the app store, but it is expected sometime in late 2010. The company's apps will not be confined to TomTom devices.

He acknowledged that GPS makers are somewhat limited in apps that can be used by drivers.

"Very few people sit in a car and say what do I want to do now. It is important nevertheless," he said. "It is important to get the depth and breadth of more applications, more content, more flexibility for both our consumer business and our automotive business."

Google's Image Search is not a copyright violation, according to a German court.

The German Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that images pulled from the Web and displayed on Google's Image Search results does not infringe on the owner's rights.

"Today's ruling makes it clear not just for Google, its users in Germany and all owners of Web sites containing images, but also for all providers of image search services operating in the country: showing thumbnail images within search results is legitimate and millions of users in Germany benefit from being able to discover virtual information at the click of a mouse," Arnd Haller, managing counsel for Google Germany, wrote in a blog post.

The case dates back several years: A German artist who had uploaded photos of her paintings to her Web site sued Google for copyright infringement when those photos showed up in Google Image Search.

Haller said Google is still waiting for the full decision, but "what we know today [is that] thousands of Web sites and companies in Germany will be able to benefit from Google Image Search in the future as well," Haller wrote.

In related news, Google on Thursday unveiled a redesigned version of Google Image Search for mobile for iPhone and Android devices. Google has made image thumbnails square to get more pictures on one page, enabled swiping to see the next page of results, and optimized for speed so images appear quickly.

To try, go to google.com and tap Images. It's available in 38 languages.

...

Just a week after the announcement, Facebook's new "social plugins" are well on their way to ubiquity. Writes FB developer Sandra Lui Huang in a blog post yesterday: "At f8, we also launched new tools called social plugins--including the Like button, Activity Feed, and Recommendations--on more than 75 websites. Already, just one week since launch, more than 50,000 sites across the Web have implemented the new plugins."

So we're wondering how many of our readers are encountering and even using these plugins--especially Like. What have you seen of them as you wander the Web. Are they fun? Helpful? Or maybe weird and intrusive?

Let us know in comments--and if you have any interesting screen grabs, we might be able to use them in a story, so please email to appscout@pcmag.com.

YouTube said Wednesday morning that it tweaked its video player to make the controls slightly less obtrusive, part of an ongoing tweak of the site to encourage users to stay longer.

What's new? Not a whole lot. Some of the navigation elements have been downplayed, and the progress bar collapses as the stream is played.

"The new player is only available/viewable in videos without ads (InVideo and InStream Ads)," a YouTube spokesman said in a note Thursday. "Embedded videos will be seen in the old player. The new player will begin supporting in-stream and InVideo ads and be seen in embeds in the coming weeks."

As a comparison, we've included a screenshot of the new look above, and an embedded video after the jump. Since the new look can only be viewed on the YouTube page for now, here's the link to the video we posted a screenshot of, above.

Apple plans to charge $1 million - ten times the amount normally charged for a mobile phone ad - for its inaugural round of iAds, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

And that's not all - Apple will actually create the ads, the paper reported.

Normally, mobile advertisers pay a budget of about $100,000 for a mobile ad. But Apple is also seeking premium ads to highlight the capabilities of the new technology, and presumably, shift users to favor them.

"Apple is seeking high quality ads from big-name marketers for the launch, ad executives say," the paper said. "The ads will go through an approval process, and Apple will build the ads itself during the first couple of months to make sure they work well and attain a certain aesthetic and functionality, ad executives say. Eventually, Apple plans to create a developer kit so that agencies will be able to design and create the ads themselves."

Apple will charge a penny per ad view, and $2 if a user clicks on them.

Apple has said previously that iAds will appear first as a small banner on one side of the screen, opening up to reveal something akin to a full-fledged app, at least for those ads that create the appropriate content. It seems likely that Apple will try to emulate the style of the iAds it demonstrated at the iPhone OS 4 launch, where Nike, Target, and Toy Story 3 all received the Apple treatment, with interactive applications, maps, schedules, and other gimmicks. The idea, of course, is to have users interact with the brand.

As one Journal commenter pointed out, however, how soon will it ...

It looks like Android phone owners won't have to wait for OS version 2.2 to get Adobe Flash video support on their phones. Today Skyfire Labs announced Skyfire 2.0 for Android, a new proxy-based Web browser that plays Flash videos embedded into Web sites.
Now, let's note that this isn't full Flash support. Interactive Flash menus and games aren't covered here. Rather, Skyfire is detecting Flash video using its servers and transcoding it into HTML5 video for phones to play, according to a press release.
The video doesn't appear embedded right into pages. It's an option on the new "SkyBar," an action bar that runs along the bottom of the screen on your Android phone. Along with the "video" icon that displays the Flash videos in a page, the SkyBar offers "explore," which searches the Web for content related to the current page, and "share," which lets users post or send the page via various messaging and social-networking services.
We reviewed Skyfire on Windows Mobile late last year, and we were impressed with its speed and desktop fidelity. But as a proxy browser, it's dependent on Skyfire's servers, which we found to be less reliable than Opera's servers. We'll see if that's shaped up.
We'll have a review of Skyfire for Android soon. It's available for download at bit.ly/skyfireandroid

Mint.com gave attendees of its second annual "Money Matters" Town Hall yesterday a sneak peek of a brand new tool that helps users achieve their financial goals, with budgets, graphs, and suggestions specific to goals. Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer walked the audience through screenshots displaying the interface and functionality of the new financial-goals tool, which he says "quantifies how your short-term behavior can affect your long term goals."

First, you choose from a variety of goals, such as buying a house, setting up a college fund, getting out of debt, and even affording an exotic vacation. You then fill in all the financial info associated with your goal and set a date for when you want to achieve it. You can upload an image to go along with the goal to help you visualize what you're striving for. The tool's wizard then evaluates your finances and offers suggestions, budgets and displays you graphs and bars that concretely show you how your spending or saving will hinder or help you to achieve your goal.

This was the first time Mint.com showed this tool to anyone outside the company, and it hasn't made screenshots available to the public yet. However, Mint.com reps told me the new tool should be available sometime this summer. I'll have more coverage on yesterday's town hall soon.

You may have missed this item because of the *ahem* other big news that went down in the mobile world last night. Understandable. And maybe Apple would have liked it that way, but the company's acquisition of San Jose startup Siri is sure to make some waves in the smartphone universe.

There's no word yet on how exactly Apple plans to incorporate Siri's eponymous personal assistant application, but many are viewing the move as another direct shot against once-friendly Google. The much-buzzed-about app is essentially a mobile search engine.

If search is, indeed, the end game, Apple may be looking to shake off Google's influence altogether by launching its own proprietary search. Apple is, after all, taking direct aim at AdSense by launching iAds on its own handsets.

There's no official word on how much Apple paid for Siri, but estimates are putting the price at around $200 million, if not more. Not cheap, but these days Apple can certainly afford it.

That sure didn't take long. For years, the free, Java-powered Opera Mini mobile browser has helped feature phone owners upgrade weak stock browsers, as well as give BlackBerry users something much faster to work with.
Now just two weeks after Opera released a version for the iPhone--the first genuine alternative browser to Apple's Safari--the company announced that the device has already become number one for Opera Mini users in the United States, easily displacing the BlackBerry platform.
The iPhone is also already the number one device for Opera Mini users in the U.K. Worldwide, the iPhone is the third-most popular handset for Opera Mini users; on this metric, the U.S. comes in fifth.
For more details, check out the latest issue of Opera's State of the Mobile Web Report.
Be sure to read our full review of Opera Mini 5 for the iPhone.

Mobile devices are turning out to be a real boon for sports fans. The latest numbers come from ESPN; the network announced that thanks to the NFL's rookie draft, its mobile Web site traffic has doubled compared to last year, FierceMobileContent reports.
After the 2010 NFL Draft first appeared in prime time on April 22, the NFL section of ESPN's mobile site picked up almost 38 million page views, with 8.8 million uniques; that last figure is two and a half times the prior year's total.
That compares with 20.1 million uniques and 86.6 million page views for ESPN's desktop site over the draft weekend, which increased 40 percent and 13 percent, respectively, over last year, the report said.

Aimed at small businesses that don't have money or infrastructure for Microsoft Exchange or some enterprise calendaring tool and at self-employed people or freelancers who have their own personal calendars but nothing else, YourAM is a Web service that can help you manage your calendar and schedule appointments with other people regardless of the calendaring service or application they use. The service even helps you manage conflicts and meeting responses, and sends you alerts when your appointments are about to begin.

YourAM is designed to give you a simple, easy-to-use Web app that has features under the hood that are powerful enough to help you spend less time managing your schedule and more time preparing for those meetings and doing the things you do best. The app brings some of the best features of a unified calendaring service to a Web app, like real-time calendar views and appointment scheduling.


In order to make the most of YourAM, your organization and the people in it still have to use the service as their primary calendaring service, so in that way it's no different from any other enterprise calendaring app. On the up-side though it's more affordable for businesses who don't want a larger solution, or for individuals who want to use something other than more lightweight free Web-based apps that help you manage your calendar but not schedule appointments with others.

The service will automatically schedule appointments around people in your organization that have marked their time as busy or blocked off an ...