The Human Interface Guidelines for Android I posted about earlier this month generated considerable interest. The folks behind it, Mutual Mobile, received a lot of feedback. The most common request was for more information and guidance about designing for Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb. Mutual Mobile has wasted no time in responding to these requests, and are today releasing version 1.1 of their Android Design Guidelines. The update “introduces some of the OS’s unique new features such as the Action Bar and Notification/Status bar along with how to utilize new UI elements like Fragments. As always, these guidelines are a living document and will continue to evolve as the platform evolves. We hope designers will use this tool to continue to innovate in Android design and help Honeycomb evolve into the enterprise tool it could be.” → Read More
Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo. This odd system uses a Kinect head and some homebrew software to 3D scan you in real time and then print out a micro-figurine. It seems to take a little bit of time – that’s not clear from the video – and the whole system isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet. → Read More
Reports are hitting everywhere that Xbox 360s previously banned for mods are now able to connect to Xbox Live. This started sometime earlier today and is either a genuinely brilliant move or simple oversight by Microsoft. Now these systems are apparently only able to sign on to the service and not participate in online play. But still, it’s something notable and gives a glimmer of hope for the millions of banned 360s cut off from the wonders of the Internet. You may have heard that Sony is in a bit of a pickle with their online PS3 service. Something about user data being stolen and generally nastiness. Could Microsoft be looking to recapture some of the Live defectors who previously jumped ship after their modded system was hit with a ban hammer? It’s unclear right now, but this mass reprieve would instantly breath new (old) life into Live. Update: Even before this post went live, it seems Microsoft corrected the error and rebanned all the systems. Bummer. → Read More
Facebook has just made a talent acquisition out of Daytum, a two-person New York-based data collection and organization startup. Founders Ryan Case and Nicholas Felton will be joining the product design team at Facebook.
Facebook has a particularly aggressive talent acquisition strategy, snapping up small companies for engineering talent over technology. Daytum marks its fifth purchase this year after Snaptu, Rel8tion, Pursuit and Beluga. Of the latter four, Snaptu was probably the largest buy at an estimated $60 – $70 million. → Read More
The 3DS isn’t selling well and it’s your fault – at least that’s what Nintendo is suggesting. According to Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, most people don’t know what the heck to do with the thing. Jeez! CVG points to this quote:
The value of 3D images without the need for special glasses is hard to be understood through the existing media. However, we have found that people cannot feel it just by trying out a device, rather, some might even misestimate it when experiencing the images in an improper fashion.
Unless you’re raiding with your WoW clan or something, I’d wager that most folks would be a bit hard-pressed to find 3 other people with the time and reason to do a 4-way mobile video chat. With that said: when it all comes together, it’s pretty damn cool. Fring first rolled out 4-way group chatting a few weeks back, albeit in a super-tight limited beta. This morning, anyone and everyone can get in on the fun; they’ve just opened up the feature to anyone with an iOS 4+ or Android 1.5+ device. What do you think: is 4-way video chatting going to be a part of your daily life in the future? → Read More
We have a surprise for you. We have three free tickets to Google I/O 2011 to give away to our readers. The event is being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on May 10th through May 11th. Google I/O brings together thousands of developers for two days, focusing on building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise with Google and open web technologies such as Android, Google Chrome, and much more. There will be 80 sessions featured, more than 3,000 developers, and over 100 demonstrations from developers showcasing their technologies. The price of these tickets ran around $500 and sold out in under an hour.
We will pick three winners tomorrow night. If you want a chance at winning a free ticket, all you have to do is follow the steps below. → Read More
Back in mid-2010, Qualcomm launched a rather cool new product: a free development framework for building vision-based Augmented Reality applications on Android. (Geek-speak translator: watch the video above — it lets developers build things like that for Android without having to do all the insanely-complicated image recognition stuff themselves). Shortly thereafter, they announced that they were tying it into the (rather awesome) rapid game development suite, Unity. All the while, it roamed the dev-lands with a Beta tag. This morning, they’re dropping the Beta tag and officially releasing the platform. → Read More
Plextor’s latest Blu-ray writer is of course the fastest yet. That’s a given as speed increase, not decrease. The PX-LB950UE writes at 12x speeds, which is twice as quick as the previous version. The magic comes by way of USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity where the older models relied on USB 2.0. The drive can write both single and dual layer discs and is LightScribe enabled. All this Blu-ray fun doesn’t come cheap, though. The Plextor PX-LB950UE is available now at a $239 MSRP. → Read More
Wuh oh — if anyone picked today to be the day when they finally go and pick up that Verizon 4G phone they’ve been saving up for, they’re going to be a bit… underwhelmed.
According to the carrier themselves, anyone rockin’ a Verizon 4G phone (read: the Thunderbolt) is “experiencing connection issues” this morning. On the upside, the phones should still work as, you know, phones — data connectivity will just be quite a bit slower. → Read More
Yahoo has finally found a buyer for long suffering Delicious. YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have acquired the company, says Yahoo, via a “new Internet company, AVOS.” We’re still gathering details, but here’s the official stuff: → Read More
You’re not still using your DSLR’s kit lens, right? You are? Nikon’s 50mm lenses are a great place to start thanks to their low price and amazing performance. The new model lacks an aperture ring, but now feature an internal motor, Nikon’s Silent Wave Motor. The older version relied on a the camera’s autofocus motor, which is something Nikon’s entry level cameras lack. Now, with the motor in the lens, this quick 50mm prime becomes a must-have for every Nikon DSLR. It’s still tiny, only weighing 185 grams. Wired states that the lens will retail for $220 and will ship this June. [Nikon] → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo today published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms. We got an exclusive early look at the new report.
According to Distimo, Google’s Android Market currently offers 134,342 free applications for download, while Apple’s App Store for iPhone offers 121,845 free applications. → Read More
If you’re a heavy user of Google Docs and are sporting an Android device, Google has some very good news: it’s just launched a new ‘Docs’ application that gives you quicker access to your cloud-based collection of documents. You can download the free app right here.
Fire up the app and you’ll see a slick-looking interface that lets you jump to your documents, images, starred items, and collections (you can also use filters to toggle between all items in your account and just those that are ‘owned’ by you). There’s also a very nifty feature: take a snapshot of a document, and Google Docs can immediately turn it into a text document using OCR (the original photo is presented in the document as well). → Read More
The cool cats over at iFixit are best known for their gadget teardowns and how-to guides, but they also sell accessories and tools. Their latest is a clear backplate for the iPhone 4. Now, this is a DIY sort of thing and will require the buyer to install the $29.99 piece. But don’t fret! iFixit has excellent guides and instructions so installition should be trivial. Note: this backplate only fits the GSM iPhone. Sorry, Verizon. You can’t have all the fun. → Read More
Multi-device social gaming platform Sibblingz, announced a new version of its cloud-based platform, codenamed Spaceport.
Sibblingz allows developers to create games on Facebook as well as iOS and Android devices, allowing players to continue the same social game as they switch between devices. The platform also offers the developers the ability to monetize free-to-play games with virtual goods. → Read More
With Apple clamping down on incentivized downloads, white-label mobile app platform Appia (formerly PocketGear) has launched a new performance based advertising network for app developers to increase app downloads and only pay for results.
In case you aren’t familiar, Appia powers a white-label content and commerce platform for everyone and anyone who needs a mobile app store. The company now powers mobile app storefronts for more than 40 partners, including four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless). The bonus of using Appia’s white-label offering is that it enables its partners to deliver apps to more than 3,200 different mobile device makes and models. Via its partnerships, Appia currently powers more than 500,000 downloads a day from a catalog of 140,000 apps with projections to double by mid-2011. → Read More
Are you a Wacom tablet user? Do you like pens? Are you a Wacom tablet user who likes pens? This guy has a product for you. Called the PenMoto, it’s basically a ring studded with magnets and a separate pen sleeve. Your pen is held into place by the magnets and you can spin it around like a Jesse James in the Rootin’ Tootin’ Wild West Show. It allows you to move the pen out of the way, for example, when you want to tap on your tablet screen. This has never been a problem I’ve dealt with but I suspect this is better for designers and CAD/CAM operators. → Read More
RealTidbits, a San Diego-based product development company, today announces the release of its RealTime Forum, an embeddable widget that allows you to add a dynamic stream and to build a realtime community on your company’s website.
RealTidbits is a spinoff of 3ones, a product development company for hire, and is a launch-partner of Echo, which recently launched its StreamServer, a realtime database and suite of services equivalent to that of Amazon Web Services. But in realtime, of course.
Those familiar with AWS (which you may have heard recently suffered from some downtime) might know that Amazon’s cloud platform allows developers to build and scale online services without the high costs typically associated with infrastructure management. In Echo’s case, the service does the computing required to capture and manage the activity of the realtime Web, which brands and publishers can then use as a service to build their own white-label applications and tie-in various social platforms, like Twitter. In essence, it’s RaaS, or realtime-as-a-service. → Read More
There is no doubt that mobile payments company Square is on a roll. The company just landed a lucrative deal selling its credit card readers in Apple’s retail stores and is growing at a fast clip. And now the company has just received a strategic investment from a giant in the credit card industry—Visa.
For background, Square offers iPhone, Android and an iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder and recently appointed product lead Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, and recently raised $27.5 million in new funding. → Read More
