Jason at TC writes about NetShare, a tethering app that has been pulled from the App store this evening. Looks like someone didn’t like the idea using up lots of mobile bandwidth on an all-you-can eat machine. More as we get it. Macrumors reports that Apple’s App Store was selling a tethering app compatible with the iPhone (both 3G and EDGE) for a brief period earlier this evening. The $10 application, called NetShare, was developed by Nullriver software, and would be a godsend for many iPhone owners. After going up around 8PM EST to the elation of a lucky few, the application was pulled down around 20 minutes later. Phone tethering allows users to access the internet from their laptop computers wherever they get service on their cellphone carrier’s data network. The feature is common on many phones with high speed (namely 3G) data access, and has been noticeably absent from iPhones. While 3G is typically slower than most Wi-Fi access points, having internet connectivity on the go is a huge plus for many people – enough so that many carrier charge on the order of $30 a month to enable it. Read more… → Read More
Yahoo is making a number of changes to its default search experience tonight to add more structured data to results. Yelp, Yahoo Local and LinkedIn SearchMonkey widgets are being added to search results automatically, eliminating the need for users to go into the search gallery and add them manually. SearchMonkey is a key part of Yahoo’s attempts to embrace the semantic web and open standards in general. With SearchMonkey, site owners create “applications” for Yahoo search that can be installed by users in the same sense that Facebook applications can be installed. Each application modifies results for a certain URL specification (for example, all reference pages on Wikipedia or product pages on Amazon). Modifications include both changes to the basic elements of a search result (the title and description) and additions such as an image, deep links, and key/value pairs. Users can also add additional widgets via the Yahoo Search Gallery. Here’s the Yelp search result example we used in our first post about SearchMonkey: CrunchBase Information Yahoo! Yelp LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Macrumors reports that Apple’s App Store was selling a tethering app compatible with the iPhone (both 3G and EDGE) for a brief period earlier this evening. The $10 application, called NetShare, was developed by Nullriver software, and would be a godsend for many iPhone owners. After going up around 8PM EST to the elation of a lucky few, the application was pulled down around 20 minutes later. Phone tethering allows users to access the internet from their laptop computers wherever they get service on their cellphone carrier’s data network. The feature is common on many phones with high speed (namely 3G) data access, and has been noticeably absent from iPhones. While 3G is typically slower than most Wi-Fi access points, having internet connectivity on the go is a huge plus for many people – enough so that many carriers charge on the order of $30 a month to enable it. Users with jailbroken (hacked) iPhones have been able to enable tethering to their phones through a complicated process for some time, but such tethering is prohibited by AT&T’s terms of service. The release of NetShare seemed to indicate (albeit briefly) that AT&T had changed its mind on the matter. Now, users who try to download the application are told that it is no longer available in their country. So what happened? The app may have snuck past Apple’s approval process – but with reported wait times of weeks (or months) it seems unlikely that anything appears there accidentally. Then again, Apple has been dealing with a massive influx of new applications – they may simply be overwhelmed and are getting sloppy. It is also possible that the app was supposed to be limited to a few select countries, and was accidentally posted on the US store. Finally, AT&T may have really changed its mind, but it seems unlikely that they’d pass up the chance to tack one more fee on our data plans. CrunchBase Information iPhone App Store Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, Nintendo has a handheld gaming device in the works ready for launch by year’s end. “We think that the timing of a new product introduction will depend upon the sales profile for the DS, and believe that lower than expected DS hardware sales could trigger an earlier launch for the new device,” Pachter said in an investor note. “DS sales are solid worldwide, but are weak in Japan, leading us to expect an introduction of a new device in Japan before the end of the calendar year.” He said that Japanese DS demand will likely continue to decline. He adds, “We think that Nintendo has a new handheld device ready for launch in [Japan] before the end of the calendar year.” What new wonders might this handheld from Nintendo hold? → Read More
Here’s a five-minute look at the DSM-330 from D-Link. It’s a DivX Connected player, which basically uses your home PC for most of the menu rendering and downloading horsepower. We’ll have a full review up in the not-too-distant future. So far, I see promise in the plug-ins feature, which allows developers to create their own stuff – I installed a Digg.com thing, an HD movie preview function, and a Google Maps application. Streaming HD content over my 802.11G wireless connection has been so-so. If the files are already on my PC, everything works great. Files that need to be downloaded and streamed on the fly tend to stutter from time to time. All in all the device looks pretty good, though. I’ll run it through some more tests over the next week or so and report back. → Read More
So I should say at the outset that there is nothing wrong with the concept of privacy. But in an age of social media, people really are going to have to start getting used to the idea that a lot of what we do in public is going to be “out there”. To digress briefly – as we heard at a session at MoMo London recently, mobile location based social networks in South Africa have privacy settings set to “public” as a default. It is then up to the user to lock down what they, well, want locked down. That’s not the case in Europe of course. But similarly, if you are in a public place, you may end up on some Qik video, or Flickr page. Yes, this is not ideal for people who still have no handle on any of this. What can I say? We are in a period of societal change. So I am rather glad therefore that the Information Commissioner has seen sense and ruled that it is “satisfied” that Google’s Street View photo-mapping – a story we helped break – will have safeguards to avoid risking anyone’s privacy or safety. The project drew criticism from “privacy campaigners” [sic.] worried it could breach data protection laws – but it must be said, the main privacy campaigner which had a problem was Privacy International. It wrung its hands over whether people’s faces in the street would end up on Google StreetView. But Google is now obscuring those faces so there is little issue with this. It seems like any time any Internet company wants to do anything vaguely innovative, there’s Privacy International popping up, worrying about “our privacy” for us. Yes, they do useful work, like in the case of fisking Phorm. But I rarely see journalists quoting anyone else. Though I applaude their work with the Big Brother Awards, I note that many of these “privacy” stories are rarely generated other than by a press release from, er… Privacy International, saying it’s worried about something. And I’m not alone in my bemusement at PI. As Mohammed Hanif says in The Guardian today: Google Street View is as much a threat to western civilisation as disposable cameras are to London’s historic monuments. The most viewed pictures on the US version of Street View include a giant pumpkin, two men leering at a woman bending over and → Read More
When Akamai missed earnings estimates yesterday, they not only cited a slowing economy but also U.S. broadband bandwidth as a reason for poor earnings and forecasts. This brings up the serious issue of broadband infrastructure in the U.S. and the repercussions of ignoring a system that needs to be upgraded. Akamai CEO Paul Sagan stated that unless broadband speeds increase, growth will taper off because consumption will have no room to grow. And according to a study conducted by Nemertes Research in 2007, US broadband will reach maximum capacity in 2010 unless there is a 60%-70% increase in infrastructure investment. It’s really surprising that none of our leaders actively speak out on the subject since it has the ability to weaken the role of the U.S. in the world economy. From this map of average broadband speeds by country, we can see where the U.S. lies when it comes to global broadband speeds. → Read More
Love them or hate them, convergence devices are here to stay and thankfully they’re getting better and better. Case in point, the Samsung i8 digital point-and-shoot camera. This tiny little 8.2-megapixel touting digi not only takes clean and sharp pictures, but it also plays back music and video like its predecessor the i85. Oh, and you can catch up on your latest novel too on the text viewer. It manages to do all four tasks surprisingly well and you’re really only limited to the size of your SD card. Donning a 3x optical zoom, I was able to snap some images that were relatively sharp. You obviously won’t be getting anything close to what a DSLR can do with a faster prime lens, but for only $300 it’s not a bad deal. The AWB isn’t the best I’ve used, but it does pretty well on an all-around basis. All the kids these days love and I mean LOVE taking pictures of themselves with friends without someone else taking the photo and most of them come out blurry or someone’s face gets chopped off. The i8’s face detection does a good job of detecting your mug and up to two others and beeps when everything is in focus. My flaring nostrils never looked so good. → Read More
Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap Revenge, has announced that the popular iPhone app will hit 1 million installs some time this weekend. The app is the second we’ve heard from to hit the milestone (Facebook reached it last week), and is another testament to the extremely rapid growth some applications have seen on Apple’s newly launched App Store. Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem says that the application has been downloaded about 900 thousand times since its launch, and expects to hit the 1 million user milestone over the weekend. Tapulous’s iPhone Twitter client Twinkle is significantly less popular, with around 80,000 installs, but it was released after Tap Tap Revenge. Decrem notes that there is a total install base of about 5-6 million iPhones and iPod Touches running the 2.0 firmware (which is compatible with the App Store). With about 1 million downloads, this puts Tapulous applications on around 20% of all devices – a very impressive feat. One of best features in the original version of the game (which was only available on hacked iPhones) was that users could create tab sheets and play the game with any song in their iPhone’s library. Unfortunately, Apple prohibits any developer from accessing the iPhone’s library with a native application, so Tapulous has been forced to come up with a different way to introduce new content to the game. For the time being they’re offering free downloads of new songs directly through the app, but these songs have all been submitted to the company by indie artists (impressively, 2.5 million songs have been downloaded so far). As it turns out, a number of record labels have taken notice of Tap Tap Revenge’s quickly growing install base, and are eager to use it as a means of exposing users to new music. Decrem says that the company is in talks with both indie and more well known artists to create a premium package of songs, which will likely be released in the App Store as a separate game for a small fee. Subsequent packages will also likely be released as their own independent games, as Apple does not currently offer a way for developers to sell new content from within an application. CrunchBase Information Tapulous iPhone App Store Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Facebook has announced the launch of a new, more structured type of news feed. The service essentially categorizes information from the old feed into separate tabs, enabling users to view activity they find interesting rather than sifting through the clutter. The feed toolbar features four tabs at the moment, including feeds for top stories, status updates, photos, and posted items. Users are also able to comment on individual updates within each feed. Though the content provided is nothing new, the structure and commenting capabilities open up entirely new possibilities for Facebook. For instance, the status feed could eventually become an aggregation point for status updates between Facebook and Twitter accounts. As more and more people connect their Twitter accounts to Facebook they will find that the status feed provides a much more manageable way to view a large amount of updates. Furthermore, the commenting system allows for a level of interaction that Twitter is yet to provide. It also enhances the photo sharing experience, which is arguably one of Facebook’s most attractive and successful features. Though this is a breakthrough for Facebook, it only scratches the surface of what they could do with the news feed. A separate feed monitoring application use could increase the viral nature of apps and boost application development across the network. Advanced filters, allowing users to follow the activity of a select group of their friends or family, much like FriendFeed’s “Rooms” feed, could make the experience much more meaningful. There are loads of possibilities. If the service ends up being a hit it will divert attention from personal profiles, and transform the Facebook experience to one of live updating; something that is very similar to FriendFeed. Facebook has started to resemble the social aggregating service more and more as of late, starting when they began to integrate items from social media sites like Flickr and del.icious a few months ago. Though the news feed is another step in that direction, FriendFeed still collects from a much larger array of services and provides many features that Facebook is yet to replicate. However, if Facebook continues to extend into this space then FriendFeed may need to revamp its service to avoid loss of new users. Until then all eyes are on Facebook. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information FriendFeed Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
The clock on the NBCOlympics.com site reads 7 days, 12 hours, 31 minutes, and 29 seconds until the start of the Olympics, but the clock countdown on watching NBC Olympics On the Go on the Mac is T minus never. That’s because On the Go is sponsored by Lenovo and powered by somebody called TVTonic, and when you click to install TVTonic you get this notice: Software Compatibility Notice We’re sorry, your computer isn’t compatible with NBC Olympics On The Go, powered by TVTonic. Please read the system requirements for more. If you would like to download the installer software anyway, you may click here to download it. Perhaps the suggestion to download the software anyway is to accommodate dual boot users, but I imagine running Parallels would avoid the whole Mac error screen anyway. What’s surprising is that Microsoft has made much of the fact that NBC’s Olympic coverage will be augmented by an enhanced experience with multiple camera angles, interactive data, and various extended features, powered by the cross-platform Silverlight technology. Just to maintain the confusion, TVTonic offers an option to Watch the Introduction video that requires Silverlight. Meanwhile, back over on the main site, the countdown continues. You can watch videos and peruse results and schedules, all powered by the afore-mentioned Silverlight, and all the while being upsold to DirectTV packages of extended coverage. There are no indications of how special Silverlight programming will be scheduled or announced, and no features like On the Go’s “subscribe to your favorite events for automatic delivery to your PC.” Not an auspicious debut for the Silverlight strategy of reaching what Microsoft thinks will be some 100 million desktops by the time the Olympics end. Oh well, guess I’ll watch the Introduction video again. CrunchBase Information Microsoft Silverlight Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
NBC has launched its online video hub for the 2008 Olympics, which features free on-demand video for over 20 sports. In order to maximize quality, the videos are available as downloads (you can start watching before the download finishes) and will be in “up to HD” quality. Unfortunately, the video downloads will only be available on Windows machines running Windows Media Center – once again Mac users are left in the cold, likely because of DRM issues (and the fact that Lenovo and Microsoft are sponsors). While the Olympic ceremonies don’t kick off until August 8, NBC has already posted footage of Olympic trials. Once the games begin, NBC expects to have the footage available around 12 hours after each competition (which shouldn’t be too annoying given the time difference). Microsoft is participating in the partnership, so access to the videos will be integrated into Media Center’s main panel. Users can also visit this TVTonic page, and the content will be available directly from NBCOlympics.com beginning next week. You can read more about the service at the TVTonic blog post here. → Read More
This “physical ambient display” is beautiful and useless — in other words, it’s art. It senses the position of your finger in the water based on electric gradients and adjusts the display based on that. It uses a lot of horsepower to do it; I bet analog equipment with real bubbles could get much the same effect. Not that I’m ragging on this thing — it’s very cool, and part of its appeal is that it’s a digital/analog crossover. You can learn more about the project here at the creator’s page. [via Gizmodo] → Read More
San Francisco, CA
