iPad By Davis: “Former head of iOS 6 Maps, and more Apple talent, reportedly now working for Facebook” plus 13 more |
- Former head of iOS 6 Maps, and more Apple talent, reportedly now working for Facebook
- Time Warner Cable to allow customers to stream select channels anywhere through iOS apps
- T-Mobile USA says iPhone 5 gave them one of their biggest launch weekends ever
- How to test Facebook Chat Heads and stickers for iOS right now, even if they haven't yet been enabled for your account
- Facebook for iOS updated with news feed redesign, brings Chat Heads to limited number of users
- Mailbox ditches reservation system, opens to everyone with a Gmail account
- Review: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad mini
- Logitech unveils Harmony Smart Control, uses your iPhone to control your entertainment center
- How to edit text you have dictated to Siri on iPhone and iPad
- YouTube iPad App Updated – Adds Access to Live Streams
- Deal of the Day: 36% off Incipio Frequency Semi Rigid Soft Shell Case for iPhone 5
- Debug 13: Mike Lee and Lemur Chemistry
- What could Dish + Sprint mean for the future of mobile video on iOS?
- ZDNet says Windows is Dead
| Former head of iOS 6 Maps, and more Apple talent, reportedly now working for Facebook Posted: 16 Apr 2013 10:37 PM PDT Richard Williamson, who led the team responsible for iOS 6 Maps, and was ultimately let go by Apple following it's controversial release, is now reportedly working at Facebook. According to Adam Satariano of Bloomberg, Williamson has been at Facebook for a couple of weeks at least. And what's more, he's not alone:
Rockstars all. And you have to admit, whatever else you think about Facebook, they're getting a huge amount of attention, and headlines lately. That kind of attention feels like momentum, and that's something in mobile right now, especially with Apple still in their "quiet period". And once again it begs the question as to what Facebook's short and long term goals are. Is Facebook Home an end-game or only just the beginning? Will Williamson build for Facebook a very social Facebook Maps app? Will we soon be able to "Like" our friends' houses and bounce their Chat Heads off the bar we're all hoping to meet up at later? Facebook has already released a Messenger (now also VoIP) app, and a Camera app, and even a SnapChat app. Add a Maps app to the mix, and a few others, and you start to have a lot more than a Home on Android. You start to have a phone. Source: Bloomberg 
       | ||||||
| Time Warner Cable to allow customers to stream select channels anywhere through iOS apps Posted: 16 Apr 2013 09:48 PM PDT Time Warner Cable will soon allow users to stream live television while away from their home. Time Warner Cable currently lets customers stream programs from select channels while on their own home network, but that is set to change starting 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning as channels like BBC America and the Big Ten Network will be available while on the go, according to a comapny spokesperson.
Both Comcast and DirectTV already offer this capability to customers, and Time Warner Cable is following the trend of the industry towards offering customers content wherever they are, on whatever device they choose. The current channel line-up, even for users streaming through their home network, is small, though this update is a step in the right direction. Time Warner Cable plans to update its iOS apps at some point tomorrow morning. Source: Bloomberg 
    | ||||||
| T-Mobile USA says iPhone 5 gave them one of their biggest launch weekends ever Posted: 16 Apr 2013 08:57 PM PDT After announcing a strong first day of sales on Friday, T-Mobile USA has announced that the launch of the iPhone on their network has resulted in one of their biggest weekends ever. While declining to give specific numbers, T-Mobile's Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said that sales exceeded T-Mobile's internal goals, and noted that there were lines outside of stores when the phone launched on Friday.
Sievert also said that most users who bought the iPhone also purchased one of T-Mobile's new Simple Choice plans. Combining the iPhone with these plans, T-Mobile hopes it can regain customers lost over the last several years, along with gaining new ones, pitching themselves as a bold, consumer-friendly telecom standing apart from the greedy, stale, consumer-hostile Verizon and AT&T. If it works, the troubled network will not only have turned its fortunes around, but they will have provided a true alternative to the dominant Verizon and AT&T, one with attractive pricing and devices. Did you buy an iPhone from T-Mobile this weekend? What has your experience been like? Source: CNET 
    | ||||||
| Posted: 16 Apr 2013 02:52 PM PDT Today Facebook released a fairly major update for the iOS Facebook app. Among the new features are messenger stickers and Chat Heads (a horribly named feature first announced for Facebook Home). Currently these new features have only rolled out to a limited number of users. However, if you have an urgent need to test them out, and you don't mind doing a little tweaking, you can temporarily enable them on your iOS device right now. The easiest feature to enable is Chat Heads. Chat Heads basically gives you a way to quickly access your current messenger conversations no matter where you are in the app. Whether or not the app shows this feature to you is determined by a key stored in a property list. Using PhoneView, you can navigate to Facebook/Library/Preferences on your device and grab the file com.facebook.Facebook.plist. This plist holds a number of keys and values that the Facebook app uses to determine how it should behave. Open the plist in Xcode (or your favorite plist editor) and look for the key 'messenger_chat_heads_ios. If this key doesn't exist in your plist, you can just add it to the top level of the file. Simply change that key's value to YES (or </true> depending on what you're editing it in), save the plist, and drag the modified plist back onto the device using PhoneView. After putting the modified plist onto your device, kill the Facebook app and relaunch it in order for it to read your new settings. Now when you have chat conversations going with people, you should see little circles with their avatars persist on the screen as you navigate around the app. So what about stickers? A plist value also exists for them, but if you set it to YES the app just sets it back to NO every time you launch the app again. The reason the value keeps getting set back to NO is because the Facebook app is phoning home and checking with the server every time to see if you're supposed to get stickers. Naturally the way to get around this is to change what the server is saying. While there are a number of tools available to proxy and modify network traffic, my favorite is Charles Proxy. One of the features that Charles Proxy offers is rewrite rules. It's basically Find & Replace for your traffic. The first thing you'll need to do is proxy your device's traffic through Charles. When you launch the Facebook app you should see a request come through that looks something like this 'https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.multiquery?sdk=ios&queries=%7B%22awholebunchofotherstuffgoeshere'. If you look at the response, you'll see the value that is telling the Facebook app to set your sticker permissions to no. You should see a 'project_name' of 'messenger_sticker' that has a 'result' of 'false'. We just need to make this say 'true' instead. In Charles, go up to Tools and click on Rewrite. Click the Add button in the lower-right to create a new rewrite rule. First you'll need to specify the location, or URL, that you want Charles to match for this. Click Add below the top pane and in host, enter 'https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.multiquery'. Once you tab to the next field, Charles will parse out the URL how it needs to and you can click OK. Next we need to tell Charles the actual rule we want it to use, so click the Add button below the bottom pane. We'll want to set the type to Body (since this is where we want to change the data), uncheck the Request box and check the Response box. In the Match section, set the value to '{"project_name":"messenger_sticker","result":false}'. Down below, in the Replace section, set the value to '{"project_name":"messenger_sticker","result":true}' and leave the Replace All radio button selected. Select OK to add the rule and OK again to close the Rewrite Settings window. Charles should be good to go now. Close the app and force close it from the background, then relaunch it, and you should see a request go out to https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.multiquery?sdk=ios&queries=%7B%22awholebunchofotherstuffgoeshere. In order to know if your rewrite rule worked, you can look in the Overview tab of the request and in the Notes section you'll see some "Rewrite Tool: body match" text if Charles was able to match and use your rewrite rule. To be extra sure, you can also view the response and see that it is indeed saying true now where it used to say false. Obviously the downside to the proxy approach is that you have to be proxying your device for it to have the desired affect. Unfortunately this is the only way I've found to enable stickers since Facebook is checking this value server-side each time. That is, until you're done testing or Facebook officially enables the new features on your account. 
    | ||||||
| Facebook for iOS updated with news feed redesign, brings Chat Heads to limited number of users Posted: 16 Apr 2013 11:01 AM PDT Facebook for iOS has received a major update today, bringing the promised redesign to both the iPhone and the iPad, along with a major feature from Facebook Home, Chat Heads. The redesigned news feed emulates the new look of Facebook on the web, with content becoming more prominent and sporting an overall cleaner look. Chat heads, one of the major features shown off in Facebook Home, has also come to iOS, allowing users to chat anywhere within the app. Unfortunately, the feature is not available for all users, and Facebook will be rolling out chat heads to everyone over the next few weeks. Facebook has also added stickers for use in chat, but these, like chat heads, will be rolling out to everyone over time. These features work on both the iPhone and iPad versions of the app. The update is available now on the App Store. We don't have Chat Heads yet, but let us know if you do, and what you think of them!
    | ||||||
| Mailbox ditches reservation system, opens to everyone with a Gmail account Posted: 16 Apr 2013 10:10 AM PDT Popular email app Mailbox has annonced that they have gotten rid of their reservation system. In a post on the company blog, the team says that they are now delivering over 100 million messages per day:
Mailbox launched with the controversial reservation system in March, letting users in on a first come, first serve basis. When they were acquired by Dropbox last month, they team said that they would be utilizing the Dropbox team's experience with handling a large number of users in order to scale faster, and it would seem that it paid off. Just over a month later, and anyone who wants access to Mailbox can get it immediately. For those who want to use Mailbox but don't use Gmail, hopefully this means that they can start expanding support for other email services soon. Have you been patiently waiting in line for your Mailbox? Source: Mailbox 
    | ||||||
| Review: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad mini Posted: 16 Apr 2013 09:50 AM PDT The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad mini is a super slim Bluetooth keyboard and aluminum smart cover for the iPad mini. Logitech describes it as 'the other half of your iPad mini'. I did a review last year of its big brother – the Logitech Keyboard Cover for iPad. I was disappointed in that one primarily because the cover would come unattached from the iPad far too easily. I also thought the keyboard was not overly impressive. My understanding is that the flaw in attaching strongly was corrected quickly – as many users who bought one in months after I did reported no problems with that issue. The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad mini (which I'm just going to call the Logitech Ultrathin for iPad mini brevity sake from here on) looked very good when I first saw it announced and I ordered one fairy soon afterwards. I've had mine for about a month now –...         Related Stories
 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||
| Logitech unveils Harmony Smart Control, uses your iPhone to control your entertainment center Posted: 16 Apr 2013 08:52 AM PDT Logitech will soon allow you to control your entire home entertainment system from your iPhone using its new Harmony Smart Control system. Centered around a small black box called the Harmony Hub that connects to up to eight devices through Wi-Fi, the Harmony Smart Control lets users control their television, sound system, game console and media players using Logitech's iOS app.
Although it comes with a remote, the power that this system is supposed to have really centers on the app, which requires iOS 5.0 or later. You can set up the Harmony Hub through the app using Bluetooth, and then configure your devices individually. Then you can use the app to do things like change the channel and control movie playback on a game console. Logitech makes a point of saying that the Harmony Hub can be hidden in a cabinet or on a shelf, getting out of the way. The Harmony app will be free, while the Harmony Smart Control, the Hub with a basic remote, is available for pre-order for $129, and is expected to be released in May. Source: Logitech 
    | ||||||
| How to edit text you have dictated to Siri on iPhone and iPad Posted: 16 Apr 2013 08:11 AM PDT If you've ever used Siri, you've most likely been given the response that your request couldn't be completed and you could perform a web search instead. In some cases, Siri doesn't understand names or words correctly which causes confusion which results in an error or incorrect results. There's actually a way to edit your request directly within Siri without having to try and dictate it all over again. Here's how:
That's all there is to it. In some cases, certain names and places can be frustrating and it's much easier to correct one word than manually search for something in Safari or through your device. Just simply correct what Siri doesn't understand. Try it out and let us know how it works for you! 
    | ||||||
| YouTube iPad App Updated – Adds Access to Live Streams Posted: 16 Apr 2013 07:21 AM PDT The YouTube app for iPad (and iPhone) was updated yesterday, to Version 1.3. One of the headline new features in the update is access to live streams – via a shiny new 'Live' link in the sidebar. You can also now queue up videos for playing on TV. Here's the full change list for this latest update: * Quick access to new uploads from subscriptions via "My Subscriptions" feed on the Guide The YouTube iOS app has really come back strong after being removed by Apple as a built-in app in iOS 6 last year. © patrickj for iPad Insight, 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us   Related Stories
 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||
| Deal of the Day: 36% off Incipio Frequency Semi Rigid Soft Shell Case for iPhone 5 Posted: 16 Apr 2013 07:31 AM PDT | ||||||
     |
Debug 13: Mike Lee and Lemur Chemistry
Posted: 16 Apr 2013 06:23 AM PDT
Mike Lee of the New Lemurs talks to Guy and Rene about airline Java, Delicious Library, Tapulous and the early days of iOS, United Lemurs, VC mistakes, the Obama and Apple Store apps, the Appsterdam project, New Lemurs, and dressing like a space pirate.
Show notes
Guests
Hosts
Feedback
Yell at us via the Twitter accounts above (or the same names on ADN). Loudly.
| |
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
What could Dish + Sprint mean for the future of mobile video on iOS?
Posted: 16 Apr 2013 06:02 AM PDT
Satellite TV innovator Dish Network has thrown a monkey wrench into Softbank's plans to acquire a 70% interest in Sprint by offering a 13% premium over Softbank's bid, and rather than buy a majority of Sprint they're proposing a full merger. For those of you who really want to understand the thinking that went into this, watch the AllThingsD video interview with Dish chairman Charlie Ergen . It's a long video, but damn, you have to admire the straight-up answers Ergen gives to the audience.
My take on the whole thing is pretty simple. Dish Network is part of the old world just like Cable TV, except that they have no easy way to deliver broadband access to customers. Cable companies, at least, have DOCSIS networks. So even if the whole planet starts to cut the cord and adopt an over the top Internet TV model, they can still get paid for the plumbing. Satellite? Not so much. Without adapting their business model these guys are dying a slow death.
Dish has been very clear about its desire to own a wireless network. But they've also acknowledged the difficulty in building out such a network without a customer base to help finance it. A partnership has always been something that made more sense to them, based on all the public commentary.
Dish even bid $5.15 billion for Clearwire about 3 months ago. But Sprint had already bid for the 49% of Clearwire that it didn't own, and being the majority shareholder, it was seen as unlikely that Dish's bid would matter at the end of the day.
So what's a satellite guy to do? Go big or go home. Step up the bid and make a play for the entirety of Sprint. Assuming the Clearwire acquisition by Sprint closes, Dish would end up with a monumentally huge spectrum asset as well as a huge customer base on which to justify an incredible LTE build out.
We all know that the future of TV is over the top. And we all know that mobile data is being used more and more to watch video. If Dish owns Sprint it can conceivably get creative in how it charges its customers for access to video. While most wireless providers are charging a hefty premium for high bandwidth plans (to accommodate video), I imagine Dish would be able to offer unlimited streaming of its programming to mobile devices provided that those devices were connected via Wi-Fi or Sprint's network.
Sprint and Dish, together, have about 70 million customers minus whatever portion of Dish's existing 14 million subscribers are also shared with Sprint. So the scale they could achieve, together, is significant. By comparison, Netflix has about 27 million US streaming customers.
That said, Netflix has a very different model. There are no channels on Netflix. There is just programming. There is no concept of live TV at all. And the price is right at $7.99 per month. Today's kids are not growing up as subscribers to Pay TV such as Dish or Cable TV. So the old world video guys need to change their model.
Yet Netflix (and Amazon, and Hulu and others) do not have access to live sports or news. Apple TV only has whatever access their limited quantity of partner apps, like MLB and NHL provide them, blackouts not withstanding. The over the top video model is not complete. Neither the new-world streaming players nor the old-world cable and Satellite guys have a full solution. They'll both likely fight to migrate towards a complete model.
Unless Softbank raises its bid, or someone else comes into the game, I think the Dish bid for Sprint will succeed. It is a very logical business combination. And it could shake up the TV market in a good way. It could make Sprint far more relevant in the wireless game. It could force other wireless players to reduce bandwidth restrictions to maintain a competitive stance. It will likely spur more partnerships or acquisitions.
Overall, I think this is good news for US consumers - and that includes iOS users. Things are about to get very, very interesting.
| |
Posted: 16 Apr 2013 06:13 AM PDT
Wow. ZDNet usually sides with Microsoft, as Slashdot points out. This is pretty interesting.
http://m.slashdot.org/story/184811
| You are subscribed to email updates from iPad By Davis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario