Author: Rahsheen on Black Web 2.0

New technology developed by Ford and Nuance bring MyFord Touch driver connect technology to Ford vehicles. It is now easier to control your vehicle using only your voice. They have increased the number of first-level commands from 100 to 10,000. This makes it easier to control your vehicle using fewer steps and more natural language.

Nuance adds more advanced recognition abilities to SYNC, which allows you to use simple phrases like “Call John Smith,” “Find ice cream,” or “Add a phone.” This is how the number of steps required to complete commands is decreased, by increasing the natural language capabilities.

Ford originally came out with SYNC in 2007 and have steadily raised the bar since then. From 100 voice commands to 100,000, they’ve increased the system’s vocabulary by 100x, which makes for a more conversational experience between car and driver.

“Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside of the car because it allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” said Jim Buczkowski, director of Ford electronics and electrical systems engineering. “The improvements we’ve made will make it easier for drivers to use and interact with it, even those customers that have never used voice recognition before.”

More first-level commands means the user spends less time learning the system and navigating menus and more time getting things done. This also lowers the bar for the average person to jump right in and use the system. A few examples of the more direct first-level commands:

• “Call John Smith” dials the phone number associated with John in a connected phone’s phonebook directly – the user isn’t required to say “Phone” first.
• Direct commands related to destinations, like “Find a shoe store” or “Find a hotel,” place users in the navigation system menu where they will be walked through the POI search process.
• The command, “Add a phone,” will enter the phone pairing menu and walk users through the connection process – users don’t have to enter a phone submenu to initiate the pairing process.

As we have become more aware of the dangers of multi-tasking while driving, voice command is gaining popularity. One of the obstacles is the limitations of the system. We want to be able to simply say what we want and have the car do it, not learn to speak differently so that the system will understand. SYNC seems well on the way to becoming a system worthy of Knight Rider.

via Engadget

Google Voice Gets Less Annoying

The concept of Google Voice is an awesome one. A single number to rule all of your phone numbers, including features like call recording, custom forwarding, and voicemail transcription. I’m loving it. It’s just implemented sort of weird. One of those awkward design choices was with the mobile version. Whenever you made a call, GV would use your mobile data connection to establish the call. Google Voice has always created a special GV phone number for each of your contacts. Now, it will automatically remember and use these numbers to establish the call, speeding things up dramatically. via The Google Voice Blog

Redbox Goes At Netflix

Redbox became the fastest growing video chain in the US by dropping little kiosks in your neighborhood and letting you rent DVD’s from it for $1 dollar per day. The major chains couldn’t compete with that type of pricing. Now, Redbox is taking on their biggest competition by trying to compete with Netflix. Many people use Redbox to get new releases, but still use Netflix to get older movies. These are revenues that Redbox aims to get back by increasing the number of titles they carry and expanding onto the web. via Bloomberg

Facebook Sucks as Bad as Your Cable Company

According to a survey done by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook is in “the bottom 5% of all private sector companies, and in the same range as the IRS tax e-filing system, airlines and cable companies.” Ouch! They scored a 64 out of 100, which is one of the lowest ranks of any company measured. You would think that with Facebook surpassing 500 million users, they must be enjoying the service, but this is obviously not the case. One theory as to why? Facebook holds a monopoly in the social networking department. via WSJ

Skype Adds Multitasking and Free 3G Calling

The Skype team has wasted no time in supporting the latest iPhone features in their new app. You can now receive Skype calls in the background while you’re doing other stuff or your phone is locked. You can also access other features of your phone while in the middle of a Skype call, like email, movie listings, and maps. They ‘ve also taken advantage of the iPhone 4’s Retina display and have decided to curb plans to charge for calls over 3G. Definitely a score for iPhone owners. via The Big Blog: Everything New at Skype HQ

Can’t make it to Comic-con in San Diego this year? Don’t worry about it. MTV and MySpace have got your back. MTV News and MySpace have joined forces and, by their powers combined, you will be able to access exclusive live broadcasts of the festivities. This is exciting news for Comic-con fans, who will get “immediate and interactive access to stars from the most highly anticipated upcoming films and television shows.”

Beginning Thursday, the live shows will hit the Net on a daily basis from the MySpace & MTV Tower at Hard Rock Hotel San Diego. MTV Movies Editor Josh Horowitz will host. Each show will stream simultaneously on MySpace and MTV.com and viewers will be able to participate in real time by posting comments and questions to have their favorite celebrities answer live.

Be sure to point your browser at MTV.com or MySpace at the following times to catch Comic-Con International 2010:

Thursday at 3 p.m. ET/ noon PT
Guests include Seth Rogen from “The Green Hornet”; the cast from “Red”; director Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo from “Machete”; and many more.

Friday at 3 p.m. ET/ noon PT
Guests include Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and director Joseph Kozinski from “Tron: Legacy”; Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong and director Edgar Wright from “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”; and many more.

Saturday at 6 p.m. ET/ 3 p.m. PT
Guests include director/writer/producer Joss Whedon and surprise appearances.

There will also be pre-recorded interviews with the casts of “Glee” and “The Vampire Diaries,” Sylvester Stallone, Jon Favreau, Cam Gigandet, Sigourney Weaver, Zachary Quinto, Stan Lee, Jason Bateman, Aaron Eckhart, David Duchovny, Guillermo del Toro, Molly Shannon, Patton Oswalt, David Fincher, Joel McHale, Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Joshua Jackson, Kristin Bauer and Joe Manganiello from “True Blood,” and more.

With this partnership with MTV.com and Comic-con, their profile redesigns, and their recent talent grab from Threadbox MySpace obviously has a plan in effect. They are still in a good position and, while Facebook has just passed 500 million users, I don’t think they need to compete directly to be successful.

A group of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University have analyzed the sentiment of 300 million tweets over a period of 3 years. This is enough data to give us a pretty accurate picture of how Americans are feeling as they tweet throughout the day and week.

This tweet data was then compared to the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW), which “provides a set of normative emotional ratings for a large number of words in the English language.” They also mashed up that data with information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Google Maps API and more. What they ended up with is a visualization showing our nation’s moods over time. Only according to Twitter, of course.

The data is pretty interesting. Some of it is as we expect. Our moods take a dive around Thursday and we are much happier on the weekends than during the weekdays. Looks like most of us aren’t too happy to be at work and that whole hump day thing seems to have an adverse affect on how we feel. We are also happier early in the day and later in the evening, presumably because of that whole work thing.

Where things get more interesting is in the geographical representation of the data. The researchers used density-preserving cartograms to display the data. These are maps that take into account the volume of tweets from an area when drawing the map. What you end up with is a map that represents each area’s size by the number of tweets coming out of it, which makes it easy to see which areas are tweeting the most at any given time.

From the geographical data, we see that people on the West Coast are generally much happier than people on the East Coast three hours ahead. East and West coasters follow the same general pattern, but tweeters on the West coast just didn’t get as emo as people on the East. One exception seems to be Florida. Watching the video, you can see that it doesn’t dip as low in mood as the rest of the East Coast, keeping pace with West Coast for the most part.

By taking a look at some basic rankings from the Census Bureau we can take things a step further. States on the East Coast have the largest populations of black people. These include New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. Does this mean that black people have bad attitudes, or is this as flaw in the sentiment analysis? Sentiment analysis is not an exact science. It doesn’t understand things like sarcasm or slang. I doubt Affective Norms for English Words is able to pick up on these things either. Given the large population of black people on Twitter, this may have had some effect on these results.

via Time-Lapse Twitter Visualization Shows America’s Moods

As of this morning, Facebook has passed the 500 million user mark. According to Zuckerberg, these 500 million users are actively using Facebook to stay connected to friends, family, and people they care about. With Facebook being as popular as it is, it’s no surprised they have been able to reach this new milestone, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

To celebrate this event, Facebook is launching Facebook Stories. This is an application that can be used to share your individual stories about the impact that Facebook has had on your life. Many Facebook users have had interesting experiences related to the site, whether it be connecting with a long lost relative or raising awareness for a cause. –

In a video, Zuckerberg goes on to say that he “would have never imagined” most of these stories would come out of Facebook when he started it six years ago. Zuckerberg and his team seem to be very grateful for the “global movement” their users have created and have put up a photo album showing personal Thank You’s from Facebook employees.

Zuckerberg is confident that Facebook will eventually reach 1 billion users. It took them about six years to reach 400 million, which happened about 6 months ago. That’s 200 million users a year. Will Facebook reach 600 million by the end of this year? Can they maintain this ridiculous growth rate? Have they peaked? With the way social media is constantly changing and spreading, it’s hard to tell what will happen.

Tonight, Zuckerberg will do an Interview with Diane Sawyer. This is a major event as Zuckerberg hasn’t done such an interview in about 2 years. As a rule, he avoids high-profile interviews, so this should be an interesting event. Besides talking about hitting the 500 million user milestone, we can assume Zuckerberg will have to answer hard questions about the privacy issues they had earlier this year.

Many users quit over the whole thing. We also have Zuckerberg’s “meltdown” at the D8 conference and the Facebook movie, which have tainted Zuckerberg’s image. While this doesn’t seem to have caused a dent in their growth, Facebook still needs to clean things up if they ever hope to reach the 1 billion user mark.

There is much more to Google Images search than meets the eye. It has evolved over time to make searching for images on the web as easy as possible and packs some pretty serious algorithms on the back-end. Google has an index of over 10 billion images. Out of the nine subspecies of leopards, each has a distinct pattern of spots. Google Images can recognize the difference, returning just leopards of a particular subspecies. That’s pretty amazing.

There is still a way to go in search for images and video on the web, so Google is redesigning their image search interface to match the “scope and beauty of this fast-growing visual web.” The new design includes:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

Of course, Google is all about that ad revenue and they’ve come up with a way to make those ads more relevant to your image searches. These are called Google Image Search Ads. They will appear just like most of the Google ads you’re used to, except the advertiser will be able to include an image along with the text. According to director of search products Ben Ling, “This allows you to reach hundreds of million of users who are searching on Google on a daily basis.” Google image search is already getting over a billion pageviews a day and I suspect the placement and relevancy of these ads may make for higher click-through rates than your standard text ads.

via Ooh! Ahh! Google Images presents a nicer way to surf the visual web

Hollywood studios, technology companies, and cable providers are banding together to create a library of media that will all be available in the cloud. The group is called The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem and they have called this initiative UltraViolet.

The DECE has been working on this for a couple of years now. The group consists of around 60 companies, so it’s easy to see how this could get complicated pretty quickly. We could also see the entire thing deadlocked as these 60 companies, all with separate interests, try to make decisions. They promise to have tech specs and and licensing details by the end of this year, though.

According to the president of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem LLC, Mitch Singer, UltraViolet will let consumers buy and access digital media through smartphones, Web-connected televisions, tablet computers, PCs and game consoles.

“We’re going to give consumers full flexibility, choice and freedom in where they can access their library of content.” — Mitch Singer

Thinking about the details of how all this would work could make your head hurt, so UltraViolet will handle all the details for you. It boils down to these companies coming to an agreement about a global DRM scheme. This type of Digital Rights Management would be easier to deal with for us as consumers because it would be supported across multiple devices and might provide less headaches and limitations than what we’re used to.

Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony, Comcast, Netflix, and Microsoft are all on board. We also have companies like HP, Panasonic, and Nokia. The names we don’t see are Apple and Disney, which could either be a huge plus for UltraViolet or an epic FAIL. What this amounts to is an iTunes competitor and Steve Jobs is having nothing to do with it. Jobs is also Disney’s largest shareholder, which may explain their absence from DECE.

There are a couple of ways this will play out. Without support from Apple, which is probably the largest distributor of digital media on the Internet, UltraViolet will fail. On the other hand, consumers might find the UltraViolet way more convenient, forcing Apple to abandon their solo approach and join the pack. Now, we just have to wait and see if DECE can get it together in make this actually happen.

See Also:

• Studios, Tech Companies Move Closer to Universal Content Access
• With DECE’s UltraViolet, We’re About To See Just How Powerful Apple Really Is
• “UltraViolet” is Short for “Giant Media DRM Cloud Coalition Featuring Everyone Except Apple and Disney”

Today, the Internet just got a little bigger as .CO domain names open up to the public. The .com domains are mostly gone. It’s almost impossible to find a good one these days with more than 90 million of them already taken. Tens of thousands of people are already estimated to be pre-registered for .CO domains.

“Today’s launch of the .CO domain represents the next phase in the growth and development of the Internet. The .CO domain will create new opportunities in global commerce, content development, social media and other forms of interactivity, which will enrich the overall Internet experience for everyone.” — Juan Diego Calle, CEO of .CO Internet.

This new batch of .CO domain names will enable individuals, businesses and organizations to acquire global, credible, and easily recognizable domain names that fit their online business or branding needs. The average person or brand has to cycle through an endless number of domains before finally choosing one that they are not really happy with. Some companies see this as more than just simple brand protection. Rather than trying to simply hold onto their current brand, they are looking to extend their brand or expand their online offerings in a way that wasn’t possible before due to the limitations in domain names. For example, Overstock.com paid $350,000 to acquire ‘O.CO ’ to target new audiences and expand its global brand.

“The O.CO domain presented us with an unprecedented opportunity to add a meaningful online presence that will enhance recognition for the “O” brand, align with current marketing initiatives, and make it easier for shoppers to find our products and services online. Dollar for dollar, it’s a homerun and well worth the investment because it reinforces among consumers that ‘O’ is synonymous with ‘Overstock’.” — Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne.

.CO domains come with added security to prevent abuse. .CO domain ownership will be highly transparent and they’ve instituted a Rapid Takedown Policy to suspend or remove domains in cases where phishing, pharming, malware, or other significant criminal and/or security threats have been established. When it comes down to it, .CO breathes a breath of fresh air into the stagnant domain market. Not only is it opening a bunch of new names with a globally recognizable TLD, but it’s also opening possibilities. Check out http://www.opportunity.co/ to see a showcase of brands already using .CO.

It looks like efforts by Steve jobs to end Antennagate have failed to turn the story around. People are still upset and a free case just isn’t cutting it. As this whole thing began to spin out of control, we saw Consumer Reports unable to recommend purchase of the device. This was despite that they say it’s the best smartphone available. Of course, if you can’t make calls with the phone, that’s kind of a big deal. Around the same time, Apple’s stock took a pretty steep dive.

Apple has been on the come up this year, overtaking Microsoft early on. It looked like Apple might be entering some type of golden age. How quickly things can take a turn for the worst, though. While the iPhone 3GS is arguably the gold standard not only for Apple products, but for smartphones in general, the iPhone 4 just slightly misses the mark.

On the other side of things, Microsoft has completely redeemed themselves from that whole Vista thing. Windows 7 is selling like hotcakes. Microsoft is paying attention to the direction of technology and going with the flow, integrating Office 2010 and Outlook with social media using Social Connector. They are taking their place as a competitor on the desktop and in the cloud. They are working hard to actually offer value and stay relevant, which is a change from them simply dictating what relevant is.

And maybe that is where the problem lies. Apple has done whatever they’ve wanted up until this point. They have created trends and pushed technology, even for those who are not fans of the company. People who are fans are usually very passionate about Apple and their products. In this case, Apple made a design choice that they felt was right. They focused a little too much on form and not enough on function in one particular area: antenna design. They also fell short in responding to complaints and, when they did, they refused to take blame and even seemed nonchalant and annoyed by their customers.

It will be interesting to see if Apple continues on a downward trend. Android phones are improving and multiplying. Tablets/Slates will be coming later this year featuring Android, WebOS, and some variation of Windows. Christmas is going to by crazy. Apple may have been the first to reach higher ground, but it looks like they might be outnumbered and surrounded.

via Lost Crown: Apple No Longer Worth More Than Microsoft.

What do you get when you cross the most popular location-based social networking site with a powerful search engine? A way to find the hottest spots around town in real-time. Forget looking up stale reviews, figure out where everybody is at right now. According to Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, this is exactly the type of relationship Foursquare is looking for with Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Crowley says that the data generated by Foursquare “generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search.”

“We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.”

Location, while wildly popular, is still mostly a misunderstood area. While millions of people flock to these services to share their everyday happenings, others look at them and wonder what the point of it is. This is pretty much the same situation we see around Twitter. The true power with these services is not the simple interactions, but the data those interactions create. In this case, we see a very interesting opportunity to figure out what places people are going to and not simply what topics they’re talking about online.

While Foursquare is enjoying a lot of success right now, they are only just getting started. Attracting users is only the first step. How they choose to use the data collected from users will be much more interesting and may help more users see what all the fuss is about. We are seeing the potential already with Foursquare layers, which combines your location data with information about the location to give you a deeper context about where you are.

Crowley doesn’t have a timeline yet for these search deals, but says that the search giants are not the only ones interested in Foursquare’s data. All three search engines have neither confirmed nor denied that they’ve been in talks with Foursquare.

via Foursquare ‘in talks with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!’ about search partnerships

Old Spice Shows New Media How It’s Done

Pretty much everyone knows who the Old Spice Guy is. The first commercial had everyone from your best friend to your grandmother ending sentences with “I’m on a horse!” Who knew this ready to like manly man would step out of your TV screen and start responding to you on Twitter and Facebook? The Old Spice marketing team churned out over 65 custom video responses to questions asked on the Internet. The marketing campaign was a smash, totally changing the image of Old Spice from an old man’s after-shave to anyone’s favorite bath time treat.

Apple’s “Surprise” Press Conference

Apple has announced a press conference for today, Friday, July 16, at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Presumably, they will address the iPhone 4 antennae debacle, but who knows where things may go from there. Many blogs have speculated on what will actually happen during the conference. Some say they will not address the issue at all, while others say they may give everyone a credit towards a free case. Bottom line is that Apple needs to do something major to save their image of perfection and user satisfaction.

Google Games Secretly Underway

According to TechCrunch, Google has secretly donated between $100 and $200 million dollars to Zynga. The plan is to use Zynga as a base for a new project called Google Games. Even as they lose a bit of market share to Bing and Yahoo, Google is still making things happen from the sidelines. The reason this partnership with Zynga is so important is because it helps Google gain access to a large social graph of users. These games attract a large amount of users and have a viral quality to them that makes the investment worthwhile.

Posterous Goes at WordPress with New Import Feature

Posterous has it’s target set on WordPress with a new import feature that will make switching from WordPress to Posterous extremely easy. If WordPress is just too much power for you to deal with, Posterous is a great alternative. The problem is that many people are already fully invested in WordPress. Posterous now takes away the hassle and makes the switch a cinch. This is actually part of a larger campaign for Posterous to develop import tools for 15 services in 15 days, which has already brought the lawyers out.

Even though Facebook, Twitter, and Google have dominated the headlines, MySpace has not stopped putting in work. They have been in the lab working on their product as well as acquiring new talent for their team. Last night, MySpace vice president of online marketing Sean Percival tweeted about “clean new profiles” that are starting to pop up around MySpace. Hours later, MySpace confirmed that they were testing a new profile design:

“We’re testing a new look and feel of our site among users and the response so far has been positive,” …”As always, we’re interested in hearing feedback from our community as we roll out enhancements to the user experience and look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks.”

These profiles are rolling out out slowly, so you may not see yours yet (I know mine hasn’t been updated). Here are some details about the new design pointed out by Mashable:

• A new left-hand navigation: Profile navigation has been condensed into the left hand navigation menu under the profile picture.
• Focus on the stream: MySpace Stream — the site’s version of the Facebook newsfeed — is the focus of the the new profiles. You can view a user’s recent activity, comment on items and share content with friends.
• Follow on other social networks: There’s a new module giving you the option to follow a user not only on MySpace, but also on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Whether this is a standard module remains to be seen.
• A vastly improved UI: Without a doubt, the new profiles feature better design than their predecessors, which have been the scourge of social web app designers for a few years now.

Reactions are mixed so far, but that’s always the case when a site does a complete redesign. Especially when it involves personal profiles, which MySpace has always been known for. Their glitter graphics and raining hearts have been both a blessing and a curse.

On a related note, MySpace has also acquired the team and assets of Threadbox, the social media service that aims to kill your email. Threadbox is focused on making communications and collaboration easier. Methods for communication on MySpace are somewhat scattered and Threadbox might just be the technology they need to tighten things up. According to a representative from MySpace:

“We’re thrilled to announce that the talented Threadbox team has joined MySpace. We’re in active discussions about how we can incorporate their innovative technology into our site.”

Not only is Threadbox a powerful collaboration tool on its own, but it’s also helps you pull your social media world together by integrating into your email, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. With a new visual interface and some work on the back-end with the Threadbox team, MySpace might be on its way back.

As media gathered for the Apple Press Conference today, many speculated about what was going to happen. Would Steve Jobs apologize for the iPhone 4 antennae flaw? Would they offer free bumper cases to reduce the problem? Have they developed an in-store fix to coat the antennae? Would we get details on the white iPhone 4? Maybe they would just announce some random new product to distract everyone from the antennae debacle entirely.

The conference opened with Apple playing the iPhone Antenna Song, which was pretty odd. Jobs took the stage, chuckling about the video. He went on to say, “We’re not perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. We know that. You know that. But we want to make all our users happy. If you don’t know that, you don’t know Apple. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do that.”

Jobs began to explain the technical details behind the antenna problem and how the iPhone 4 is not the only device effected. They showed videos of other phones experiencing the exact same problems. Jobs says they were aware of the issue, but took it as a matter of course.

“We have an extremely sophisticated antenna lab. This is a state of the art antenna test facility. We have 17 anechoic chambers. We’ve invested over $100m in our antenna testing facilities over the last 5 years, and we have 18 PhD scientists and engineers doing some very advanced antenna design.”

To put things in perspective, Jobs pointed out the call drop rates of the iPhone 4 as compared with the iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 4 drops less than 1 additional call per 100. According to Jobs, that’s even too much for Apple. Jobs believes that the major difference between the 3GS and the 4 is that the 3GS didn’t change the design of the phone. There were a number of cases available, on day one. The iPhone 4 has a radically new design and doesn’t fit any of the cases. Jobs believes this problem only became so noticeable because users who wanted a case weren’t able to get one, which would have shielded the antennae from interference.

“Having said this, we care about EVERY user. And we’re not going to stop until every one is happy. But it’s important to understand the scope of the issue — the data says the issue has been blown so far out of proportion, it’s incredible.”

There are two primary solutions to this problem that have been touched on before. In order to make sure your phone is reporting the proper signal strength, you will need to update to iOS 4.0.1. That solves part of the problem in that the change in signal when holding the phone in the iPhone 4 Death Grip won’t be as drastic.

The second and more interesting solution is that Apple will issue everyone who bought an iPhone 4 a free case. You will be able to sign up for your case on the Apple website. Even if you already bought a case, Apple will give you a refund. Because they can’t make the bumper cases fast enough, you will have a choice of which case you want from the website. All this goes on until September 30th. In the event that this is just not a good solution for you or you are just not satisfied, you can get a full refund (it seems they will waive the restocking fee).

I think they make a good point and have offered a decent solution. At this point, only 1.7% of iPhone 4 users have actually returned their phones over this issue, compared to 6% who returned the iPhone 3GS. Is this the solution that everyone has waited for? A free case? Will this soothe the angry mob or is this simply a case of Apple relying on ego and confidence to get out of facing the problem directly?

via Gizmodo,GDGT,Ars Technica, and MobileCrunch

In the early phases of iPhone 4 development, a senior engineer voiced concern over the antennae’s design. They warned that the design could lead to signal problems and dropped calls. Those very same problems that are currently causing such a buzz in the tech and mainstream worlds now.

Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may hurt reception, said the person, who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf and asked not to be identified. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s June 24 release, according to another person familiar with the situation.

Apple chose this particular antennae design because they were looking to create a thinner handset. By wrapping the antennae around the edge of the device, they were able to get what they wanted. There are actually multiple antennae wrapped around the device to cover different frequencies. With it in such an easily accessible place, the antennae is also vulnerable. By putting your fingers in the wrong place on this outer bezel, you can easily short out or interfere with your iPhone 4’s signal strength and possibly cause your call to drop.

Knowing that Apple had previous knowledge of the antennae issue makes their responses to customer complaints even more baffling. Since they actually had time to think about it, you would think they would have come up with a better response then telling customers to not hold the iPhone a certain way.

The latest update to iOS, the software that runs the iPhone, is supposed to fix part of the problem and it looks like it’s being rolled out at this moment. While this update will not keep your calls from dropping, it will give you a more accurate view of your signal strength. You see, Apple was “accidentally” using the wrong formula to calculate the bars on your phone, so it looked like you had a strong signal when you didn’t.

In any case, it doesn’t look like this is a problem Apple can fix. It’s a design flaw in the phone itself and the issue has been completely blown out of proportion, primarily because of the way Apple has handled it. They have announced a press conference for Friday, so it will be interesting to see how or if they will address this issue.

Apple is ready to release a new MacBook Air, an updated iPod Touch, and will possibly be bringing FaceTime to the iPod Touch and iPad. Both of these should be available later this year. According to Mingchi Kuo, senior analyst at Digitimes Research:

• Citing discussions with upstream component makers, noted that the 11.6-inch MacBook Air will feature an even slimmer and lighter design than the previous-generation models and the technologies used for the design and concept are expected to be broadly used in the company’s other product lines to boost their competitiveness.
• The new iPod touch will feature a 3-megapixel camera, capable of both photo and video recording, and will adopt Apple’s latest A4 processor, which is also used in the iPhone 4.

What we don’t see here are dual cameras for the iPod Touch, which would make it a prime candidate for FaceTime. According to Boy Genius Report, Apple is working on making FaceTime work for devices besides the iPhone. To do this, you will be able to start FaceTime video calls using your Apple ID. This ID is registered to whatever device you’re connecting from. Apple will use push notifications to alert you of incoming FaceTime calls. Allegedly, FaceTime in the new iPhone OS 4.1 beta already has support for recognizing these push notifications.

One area that isn’t clear is how a non-iPhone device would start calls to an iPhone. It seems like you would still need to use the phone number, which raises the issue of the calling device not actually having phone capabilities. In this case, an Apple ID associated with the iPhone itself seems the most likely solution.

This is a logical progression for FaceTime. During its initial demo at WWDC, Jobs said that he wanted FaceTime to become an industry standard for video calling. The first step would be to activate FaceTime on non-iPhone Apple devices like the iPod Touch and iPad. This would lay the groundwork to extend the capabilities to other manufacturers. An Apple ID is simply an email, so calls could be initiated across carries and manufacturers using any email address you have associated with your phone. Of course, this is all still in the rumor phase, but I think FaceTime on Android would be pretty cool.