Category: Tech

Restart to Safari

MacRumors reports an interesting feature in Mac OS X Lion called Restart to Safari. This feature is reminiscent of Google’s Chromebook, which cuts away your operating system and puts all the focus on accessing the Internet via a web browser. In Apple’s case, though, the motivations are different. They are probably not planning to dump Mac OS X in favor of providing a lightweight, browser-only interface.

This feature seems to be part of the “Find My Mac” feature set which allows users to get access to the internet. Though the premise appears to be to give your Mac a chance to phone home, the feature seems very useful for day to day use.

Updates to Google Sync for iOS

Google Sync is the technology that keeps your phone’s native mail and calendar apps in sync with your Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Google has released 3 updates for Google Sync that should make some iPhone and iPad users more productive:

• Now, you will be able to search all your emails in Gmail, not just the ones stored locally in your iOS Mail app.
• Accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.
• Send email from the address you want. Many of us manage multiple addresses and Gmail’s “Send Mail as” feature was not available on your iOS device. Now, you can keep things more consistent as the iOS mail app will respect those settings.

Lady Gaga and 50 Cent All About Bre.ad

Bre.ad is a custom link shortener funded by Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter. There are many…many link shorteners already out there, but Bre.ad seems focused on big brands and those looking to promote themselves. Promoting online requires strategy. There is a delicate balance between promoting your own stuff and helping others to shine. Bre.ad sort of allows you to do both at the same time. Clicking a Bre.ad link takes you to a splash page where you spend five seconds reading a custom message and viewing a branded image before being forwarded to the actual destination. Sounds annoying as all get-out, but Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, and Pepsi have all already signed on. With most users not willing to wait any more than a few seconds for a site to load, it will be interesting to see how Bre.ad does.

via BetaBeat

Facebook Moves in Against Apple and Photo Sharing

Two major leaks from Facebook this week. The first is a photo sharing app which has the potential to completely change the game. Photo sharing is a hot area right now with apps like Instagram and PicPlz exploding. Facebook, still quite popular for sharing photos with friends, apparently has no plans to be left behind. Their leaked photo sharing app seems to do way more than just share photos, building on features from Color, Path, and even Path’s new side project, With. Check out TC for a healthy helping of screenshots from the mobile app.

Facebook has made a commitment to support HTML5, which powered their recent upgrade of the mobile Facebook site and is likely behind the upcoming photo sharing app. Development using HTML5 also happens to be one of the ways to get around Apple’s lockdown. One could distribute apps across most mobile platforms using HTML5 web apps. Facebook’s Project Spartan is allegedly going to do just that, and more. Instead of simply using HTML5 support in the Safari mobile browser to bypass Apple’s App Store, they are rumored to be planning a full on attack by distributing mobile apps and games through the mobile browser. I have long been a supporter of HTML5 as a mobile development platform as it gives the developer full control, but I never thought Facebook would leverage it in this way.

Samsung and Apple Trade Prototypes

Apple filed suit against Samsung a while back, saying that Samsung is basically biting Apple’s style with their line of Android phones and tablets. As part of this suit, Apple demanded to see pre-production samples of the upcoming Droid Charge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 so that they could evaluate any similarities. What does Samsung do in response? They demand access to the upcoming and unannounced iPhone 5 and iPad 3. A pretty ballsy move by Samsung, with the goal being to get Apple to move on and resolve this lawsuit. Are Samsung devices similar to iPhones? I’d say so, but so are all the other touchscreen smartphones out there. Apple was the innovator, but I doubt they can really stop other companies from leveraging that innovation. Check out the full rundown at This Is My Next.

Tupac and Biggie Alive and Living It Up in New Zealand?!

No, not really. Just a prank pulled by a group called LulzSec. They hacked into the PBS.org website and, among other defacements, posted this fake story about Tupac and Biggie staying in some unnamed town in New Zealand. Besides defacing the site, they also compromised network, server, and database details, and user login data for some PBS staff and contractors. In a statement, LulzSec sort of explains why they attacked PBS:

Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside… wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they’re sailing next time.

via BoingBoing

Twitter Launches Photos and Follow Button

Twitter had two interesting announcements this week. The first being a revamped search interface with tighter integration for photos and videos. This comes in part via a partnership with Photobucket, one of the first photo sharing sites in the game. See relevant photos and videos right alongside your searches at Twitter.com. We will also soon see the rollout of a feature that lets you add photos directly to your tweets. Yes, you could do this before with 3rd party services, but it’s a feature of the official Twitter.com interface now.

Next up is Twitter’s new Follow button. This makes it a snap to follow people and brands on Twitter instantly from their sites. It’s almost exactly the same as the Facebook Like button, except you’re actually subscribing to someone on Twitter. In addition to integration across sites like About.me and MTV.com, you can integrate the follow button into your own site.

Klout Introduces +K for Topical Influence

Speaking of buttons, the popular social media influence monitoring site Klout has announced a feature they call +K. This allows you to vouch for your peers on specific topics.

Microsoft Gets $5 Everytime HTC Sells an Android Phone

Windows Phone 7 may not be the hottest mobile platform out right now, but at least Microsoft can make some change off Android. Wait…What?! According to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, this is exactly what’s happening. Microsoft makes 5 bucks for every Android device sold by HTC. This is due to a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual William Pitt Real Estate property infringement. They aren’t stopping there, though. Microsoft is seeking anywhere from $7.50 to $12.50 per device against other handset manufacturers. Why not go directly after Google? Probably because the actual manufacturers are easier to pick on. There is also the fact that Google isn’t actually selling the phones, just providing the OS.

via TNW source BI

Twitter Officially Buys Tweetdeck

In a deal finalized on Tuesday, Tweetdeck has officially been acquired by Twitter. It’s both exciting and scary, kind of like when Microsoft acquired Skype. It means that TweetDeck will now have abundant resources to do what they do, but there is really no telling what Twitter will do with it. They haven’t exactly been to keen on third-party clients and developers. TweetDeck could very well be scrapped for parts to bolster the #1 Twitter interface: Twitter.com. Remember, TweetDeck has already created a multi-column HTML5 version of the popular TweetDeck client that works in Chrome.

Quora Launches SMS Support

You can now search and add questions to Quora via SMS on your mobile device. No fancy iPhone or Android app. No fancy HTML5 mobile website. This is straight up text messaging. Might sound archaic, but the fact is that most people still do not have a smartphone. Most of those people can text and they probably have questions they want answered. Holden Page says this move is pure genius, citing chat only 17% of Gen X and Y folks have a smartphone and pointing to Twitter’s rise being powered by initial SMS support. This now puts Quora in competition with services like ChaCha. If you are not already using Quora, will this make a difference?

HTC to Unlock Bootloaders

Due to consumer feedback, HTC will soon make it much easier to install custom ROMS on their Android phones. You know, the ones they pay Microsoft $5 a piece to sell (see above). ROM creators like @Cyanogen, who develop the popular (and totally awesome) CyanogenMod, had to resort to hackery and other mischief to get their product onto HTC devices. Now, this process will be much easier. After outcry from the HTC community, HTC CEO Peter Chou’s released the following statement:

There has been overwhelmingly customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we’ve listened. Today, I’m confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience.

via MobileLuv source GDGT

Square Moves Towards Mobile Wallet

The app that lets anyone accept credit card payments using their mobile device has taken things to the next level. Their Card Case feature turns your mobile into a virtual wallet, eliminating the need to actually pull out a physical card to pay for anything when you visit a trusted business.

Card Case is a new venture by Square that essentially puts a mobile wallet on a consumer’s iPhone or Android smartphone that they can use at any Square-enabled business. Users can store credit card information for each business they frequent. Upon entering the business, users can enter their name, select their virtual card from the Card Case app, order their stuff, and Card Case takes care of the rest.

Android Users Vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Due to an insecurity in Google’s ClientLogin Protocol, it seems any Android user running 2.3.3 or earlier could unknowingly give away access to personal data. Researchers at uulm claim that authToken information, stored for 14 days any time you login to sites like Facebook and Twitter, can be easily obtained by hackers:

“To collect such authTokens on a large scale an adversary could setup a wifi access point with a common SSID evil twin of an unencrypted wireless network, e.g., T-Mobile, attwifi, starbucks…With default settings, Android phones automatically connect to a previously known network and many apps will attempt syncing immediately. While syncing would fail unless the adversary forwards the requests, the adversary would capture authTokens for each service that attempted syncing.”

Today, Google announced a fix for the problem, which will be completely transparent to users. You won’t have to do an update or install anything. Picasa synchronization, introduced in Android 2.3, will remain unencrypted. If you think you already got got, you will still need to change your Google password.

Keep in mind that, in order for the attack to work, you would have had to connect to a “fake” unencrypted WiFi network at some point.

via Gizmodo

AT&T Sees the Light. Removes App Restrictions.

It’s been a long time coming for AT&T Android smartphone customers, but you will FINALLY be able to install 3rd-party applications on your devices (sideloading). This means you will also now get access to Amazon’s Android Appstore, which is still giving away a free app on the daily. The Samsung Infuse, which just launched recently, will be the first phone to get this functionality.

“Over the next few weeks, we will also roll out this capability to existing devices in our base for which an upgrade is possible,” an AT&T spokesman said.

It appears those free daily apps from Amazon were a huge factor in AT&T changing their position. Customers were very vocal and AT&T had no choice.

via Wired

Netflix Single Largest Source of Interenet Traffic in the US

According to a report by Sandyvine, Netflix now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic in North America. This puts it ahead of Bittorrent, YouTube, and all HTTP websites by a pretty big margin. Bittorrent still dominates upstream traffic, though. The reasons for Netflix dominating our downloads? Video streaming eats up a lot of bandwidth, so it doesn’t take much actual usage to post big numbers. Still, this report highlights the major changes in how we consume visual content.

via TechCrunch

Google Teaches Developers How To Turn Apps Into Businesses

Apps are where it’s at right now, but there is more to success than just developing an app. Just like any other creative pursuit, there is work to be done once you have a finished product. It’s highly likely that, just like your average musician, developers need a little direction when it comes to the business end of things. This is where Google’s Guide to the App Galaxy comes in:

App Galaxy isn’t an eBook, PDF, or subscription you have to pay for to take advantage. You don’t have to specifically be an Android (Powered by Google) developer either. App Galaxy is pretty awesome website (no sign-up required) that’s designed as a spaceship taking off that carries you through the many aspects of the app business, regardless of what platform you choose to develop for, as it blasts off into the app success stars.

via BrothaTech