Posts Tagged ‘VentureBeat’
Motorola buys into mobile media syncing with Zecter
Motorola Mobility seems to be snapping up startups in advance of its planned spin-off from parent company Motorola early next year. Today, it announced that it’s acquiring Zecter, which develops applications for storing your media online and streaming it to other devices.
The deal was , which said Motorola was “close to acquiring” the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. Today, claiming the two companies share a vision to “create a seamless way for people to share content across multiple devices,” and that Zecter can better achieve that goal using “Motorola’s brand and distribution.”
Zecter said the Motorola acquisition won’t prevent the company from offering apps on non-Motorola platforms. It will continue development on , for iOS (that’s iPhone and iPad), Android, and webOS devices. , will temporarily stop accepting new users.
Back in September,.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zecter’s investors include Ram Shriram, Tandem Entrepreneurs, VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergero, and incubator Y Combinator.
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Foursquare launches new Android app earlier than expected
Foursquare may have just , but the company isn’t done with the upgrades just yet. Cofounder and chief executive Dennis Crowley just that the Android version of the new app is now available, complete with the new comments and photos features.
Though the company noted the Android version wouldn’t be out till sometime “later next week,” Android users are getting an early Christmas present. The reason may be a crowdsourced approach to testing the app, according to another from Crowley.
The comments feature is meant to give users some added value around meeting up with friends and exploring around town and the photos feature will allow for users to attach photos to a friend’s comment or the venue itself. On Monday afternoon, .
The New York City-based company, founded in 2009, has raised more than $21 million in funding. It currently has more than 40 employees in its hometown and a new engineering office it’s opening in San Francisco.
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Skype outage affects tens of millions
Skype suffered a widespread and lengthy outage today with its Internet calling service.
The company said in a that problems with the Skype network’s “supernodes” are responsible and could take hours more to fix. Skype apologized to users. But the lesson is clear, as . If you rely as a business on cloud-based communications tools, it pays to have a backup.
Skype spokesman Peter Parkes said, “Skype isn’t a network like a conventional phone or IM network. It relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running.” That is, Skype uses a peer-to-peer model in order to connect callers.
The supernodes are like phone directories for Skype, and a number of them failed today. As we speak, Skype isn’t loading for me right now. Lots of people are affected. Skype accounts for 0.57 percent of all Internet traffic. For the first six months of 2010, of Skype-to-Skype calls.
[update: that it is now returning to normal]
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TV app Tunerfish checks in to Android
The team behind , earlier this year, just announced that it’s releasing an application for Android smartphones.
Like a number of other applications, Tunerfish takes the “check in” idea (popularized by location services like Foursquare) into the TV world. Users can tell their friends what they’re watching, see what’s trending among other users, and earn rewards. Tunerfish has already launched an iPhone application and a website. In the company says the biggest demand from users was a downloadable Android app — until now, Android users had to check-in through the website.
This idea has attracted a lot of interest from companies big and small, with and . I asked Tunerfish general manager John McCrea (who, like other members of the Tunerfish team, came to Comcast through ) about how he sees the competitive landscape, and he responded:
It wasn’t too surprising that a lot of startups would enter this space, but just how many has been a surprise. We’re pretty excited about our prospects in the best-of-both-worlds scenario. We remain a small and independent team, making great product in a very agile way, but we’re also part of Comcast, which should allow us to do some really exciting things in 2011 and beyond.
You can .
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Cognito Comics launches its first graphic novel for the iPad
A few months ago, and gaming company demonstrated one of the coolest media experiences that I’ve seen on the iPad — . At the time, the idea was still very much in development, but today the Operation Ajax application has gone live in Apple’s App Store.
The major startups in digital comics, and , have focused their energies on making deals with publishers to transfer existing comics to the iPad or other devices. Operation Ajax, on the other hand, was created with the iPad in mind, avoiding some of the issues that come with transferring from print (the iPad screen is slightly smaller than a standard comic book page, for starters), and also making the supplementary material that can’t be delivered in print a natural extension of the experience.
In this case, the comic in question is based on Stephen Kinzer’s nonfiction book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, which recounts the 1953 coup in Iran. Cognito gives the story dramatic shape by telling it through the eyes of a fictional CIA operative, but the company says it worked with Kinzer to make sure that the underlying facts are correct.
Operation Ajax is a comic, but it features lots of animation to move readers from panel to panel and page to page. Like I said, it’s an impressive experience, but it’s not a perfect one — it can be hard to figure out exactly when each animation is over and it’s time to turn the page. Readers can also tap on drawings to see extra material like character biographies and photos of real-life locations. They can refer to all that material later on through folders that they can access from anywhere in the story.
The Operation Ajax app is free () and includes the prologue for the story. After that, each chapter (which is about the length of a normal comic book) will cost $2.99, and Cognito plans to release a new chapter each month (or slightly more frequently).
Tall Chair, meanwhile, built the underlying platform and says that it could be used to create iPad-centric content beyond the political comics that Cognito is interested in — but we’ll have to wait for an announcement sometime early next year to hear the details.
Cognito and Tall Chair are both based in San Francisco.
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The best and worst in mobile 2010: It’s all about Apple and Android
It’s been a big year for mobile news. Android continued its strong growth in the smartphone market, Apple shook things up with the iPhone 4 and completely rejuvenated the tablet market with the iPad, and former mobile titans like RIM, Palm and Nokia struggled to maintain their relevancy.
I may be a little biased as VentureBeat’s lead mobile writer, but this year made it clear to me why mobile is one of the most exciting and vibrant areas in technology right now. The research firm IDC predicted in September that this year over last, and it doesn’t look like that will slow down anytime soon. Come next year, we can expect cheaper and more capable smartphones, and tablets that can finally stand up to the iPad.
But before we enter 2011, let’s take a look back at some of the best and worst stories in mobile news this year.
The Best
The iPad finally gets the tablet right, others follow suit
Apple’s wildly successful tablet was one of the worst kept secrets in the technology industry by the end of 2009, when multiple reports pointed to the fact that Apple was gearing up to introduce a tablet device. But not everybody was excited for yet another computing platform (). But, Apple being Apple, it managed to defy expectations , and it continued to do so as the tablet sold like crazy, .
Mere speculation of the iPad sparked an entirely new wave of tablets earlier this year, but most of those early entries failed, like the HP Slate and (more on the latter below). As it was becoming clearer that the iPad was a success, pretty much every major technology company threw their hats into the tablet arena, with the majority adopting Android as their tablet platform of choice. While is the only legitimate Android iPad competitor right now, we can expect even stronger competition next year. RIM also , which looks cool, but didn’t do much to negate the company’s failure to innovate this year (see below).
Android adoption grows like wildfire thanks to killer devices
Google’s Android platform wasn’t truly successful until the release of the Motorola Droid in November 2009, which was buoyed by a strong anti-Apple marketing campaign. Verizon apparently spent $100 million advertising the Droid, an investment which went on to help the entire Android platform in 2011. Earlier this month, Google’s every day (nearly 10 million a month), up from around 50,000 activations at the beginning of the year. In comparison, in its last quarter.
We can also point to the slew of great Android devices this year as a driving force behind the platform’s success. The year started off with the first true “Google phone”, the Nexus One, which Google attempted to sell on its own through an online store. That plan , but the Nexus One heralded other superpowered Android phones like the Evo 4G and Droid X. In the second half of the year, Samsung unveiled its ambitious Galaxy S line of phones across all major US carriers, which we’ll discuss further below.
Basically, if you were on the lookout for an Android phone this year, it was tough to be disappointed.
Apple’s iPhone 4: Its most polished entry yet
Despite the many great Android phones that hit the market this year — which brought a sexy new design, high-definition video recording, front facing camera and FaceTime for video conferencing, and a high-resolution “Retina Display.” Apple didn’t increase the iPhone’s screen size to compete with larger Android phones, but the iPhone 4’s display looks so good it didn’t seem to matter that it was still 3.5-inches.
But while the iPhone 4 is definitely one of the best phones to come out this year, it isn’t without it’s problems, as we’ll discuss below.
Samsung comes out of nowhere to become a major Android manufacturer
Samsung has been building mobile phones for years now, and it’s also released a couple of low-end Android phones. So you can imagine the surprise when, seemingly out of nowhere, featuring its droolworthy 4-inch Super AMOLED screens and its powerful 1-gigahertz Hummingbird processor. And the company didn’t just focus on hardware — Samsung also managed to bring its Galaxy S phones across all major U.S carriers.
The company’s ambition has seemed to pay off. Samsung announced in November that it , and earlier this month we reported that . Much of the hardware in the Galaxy S phones went into Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet, which has sold 1 million units two months after it launched. And of course, Samsung’s Galaxy S experience , the second Google phone and Nexus One successor.
Front-facing cameras for mobile video chat
Before we knew the official specifications of the iPhone 4, it was widely known that it would pack a front-facing camera for mobile video conferencing. At the time, I argued that , something I believed would be the next killer feature in smartphones. When Apple finally unveiled the iPhone 4, its was one of the biggest announcements. Finally, we had a simple way to initiate mobile video chats from our phones as easily as making a standard phone call.
While FaceTime is certainly restricted by only working on WiFi networks, Apple made the technology even more useful and the most recent iPod Touch version (which also sports cameras).
Android phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch 4G and Nexus S also feature front-facing cameras, and I suspect the feature will become even more common next year. The new wave of front cameras also opened the doors for , which has created mobile video chat apps that will work across the iPhone and Android.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is surprisingly cool
Perhaps it was the low expectations going in, but count me as shocked that Microsoft was actually able to make a desirable smartphone platform in Windows Phone 7 — one that offered some key difference from its competitors, as well as an attractive and refreshing user interface.
Microsoft , but didn’t until October. And by that point, it was obvious that to regain its relevancy in mobile devices. The company , and a few weeks after the phones hit shelves. Microsoft announced yesterday that , which doesn’t tell us much about actual users, but it’s a sign that consumers definitely want the phones.
Microsoft knew what it needed to succeed: Attractive high-end smartphones, a strong app community and a modern OS. With Windows Phone 7, it managed to put together all of the right pieces to deliver a platform , even if it is several years too late.
Worst
Microsoft’s Kin: The phones nobody wanted
Kin. Need I say anything else? From the moment , its misguided attempt at capturing the youth market, it was clear that Kin was an idea several years too late. They were severely restricted phones that had subscription plans just as expensive as real smartphones. So it was no surprise when Microsoft, surely with plenty of egg on its face, several weeks after the phones hit stores.
At the time of the Kin’s death, I wrote:
What started as an ambitious attempt to justify Microsoft’s purchase of Danger, the company behind the popular Sidekick messaging phones, turned into a misguided attempt at trying to figure out what young people find cool. Never mind that many teenagers and twenty-somethings had already moved on to legitimate smartphone platforms.
The Kin phones lacked an application store and seemingly basic functionality like a calendar and instant messaging software — a glaring omission for something aimed at “connected” youth. Ultimately, the Kin’s failure is one Microsoft needs to remember: Instead of trying to force-feed a lackluster product to consumers, perhaps it should devote more time on creating something people actually want — like it did with the Xbox 360.
Microsoft kills the Courier dual-screen “digital journal”
At a time when every company seemed hell-bent on taking on the iPad with tablets of their own, was a breath of fresh air. Courier was a dual-screened “digital journal” that was touch-screen capable, but also featured a stylus pen for hand written text, diagrams and more. Video demonstrations of the product made it seem like the evolution of the digital planner, combined with a personal journal and web-enabled tablet.
It was an ambitious move for Microsoft — so before the project even got off the ground.
iPhone 4 design issues: Antennagate, glassgate and the elusive white iPhone 4
As beautiful as Apple’s iPhone 4 may be, it became clear over the course of the year that Apple may have actually over-designed the phone to the point where its looks was interfering with its functionality.
The first big issue was antennagate: As soon as the iPhone 4 started getting into consumers’ hands, many began to notice that they could repeatedly kill their iPhone’s reception by holding the lower-left corner of the device. This time around, Apple made the device’s antenna an integral part of its design, and it appeared as if that allowed users to easily block reception. The issue became so widely known that to address the issue, where he mentioned that in a similar manner. Jobs , and instituted a program to offer free cases to every iPhone 4 owner.
But the iPhone 4’s troubles didn’t stop there. Several gadget sites eventually reported on another phenomenon, , where certain cases that slid onto the back of the iPhone could trap dirt and debris, eventually leading to scratches and cracks on its rear glass panel. Apple never admitted to the issue, but ended up removing sliding cases from its online stores and retail locations. The company is reportedly investigating just how widespread the issue is. It doesn’t appear to be affecting as many users as antennagate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is keen on avoiding any further controversy with the iPhone 4.
The iPhone 4’s design was . Apple showed off white iPhone 4s when it was first announced, but that version never found its way to stores. Apparently, the white iPhone 4’s glass back was leaking in light — to the point where it was washing out pictures taken by the device’s camera. The issue was apparently discovered at the last-minute by Apple. The company ended up delaying the release of the white iPhone 4 three times without explanation– now .
HP buys Palm … and does nothing with it
Following lackluster sales of the Palm Pre and Pixi, former mobile leader Palm was in a tough spot at the beginning of the year, and it quickly became obvious that the company was looking to sell. after from four other major companies. The acquisition showed that HP was serious about becoming a player in the smartphone business, and we argued .
That may still happen eventually, but for now it doesn’t look like HP has done much with Palm. In October, of Palm’s innovative webOS operating system, but at the same time it revealed the Palm Pre 2, which was nothing more than a speed upgrade to the original Pre. At a time when killer Android phones were coming left and right, it seemed downright crazy that Palm still didn’t have a major new handset. At least early next year with the “PalmPad.”
RIM and Nokia continue their downward spiral into irrelevancy
I suppose it was too much to ask to see some spark of innovation from either Research in Motion or Nokia this year. Both companies managed to release new flagship devices that somehow feel several years too late.
, it’s first attempt at combining a multitouch screen with its beloved BlackBerry hardware keyboard, which ran its new BlackBerry 6 operating system. Unfortunately, the new OS wasn’t the major upgrade that RIM needed to compete with more modern competitors, and the Torch was hampered by a slow processor and low display resolution. In the end, it was a minor release when RIM needed something major. Next year RIM may release a phone featuring the next-generation OS on its PlayBook tablet, but who knows when that will actually happen.
Nokia faced similar software problems with its N8 smartphone. In my review, . Nokia too is gearing up to release a next-generation OS next year, dubbed Meego, together with Intel. But Meego has seen some serious delays, and unless it comes out early next year, it risks being too little, too late, for Nokia.
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Most augmented reality companies not doing augmented reality?
Forrester Research just released on mobile augmented reality (AR) that says few companies are delivering “real” augmented reality (AR) today.
Augmented reality overlays digital information over your view of the physical world in a mobile device’s camera view, as pictured left. It currently works by using a combination of the mobile phone’s camera, compass, GPS data and other sensors to identify objects in the field of view, retrieve relevant data and overlay that data over the camera view. For example, you could point your camera at a building to get information about apartments for sale or the history of the building.
The Forrester report says that AR requires object recognition on the mobile device itself as well as 3D rendering to superimpose images on the real world and that only a few companies like and provide this. Visual search like and GPS browser-based experiences such as that provided by don’t meet that definition of AR.
Forrester also concludes that AR is not yet scalable or mature. VentureBeat (and possible solutions) with mobile AR technology at the start of 2010. Thus far, few consumers are using the technology. Layar is ahead of the pack with 1 million active users, while Metaio’s Junaio mobile AR solution has been downloaded 500,000 times.
Mobile AR will merge with other technologies like location-based services, visual search, image and facial recognition and barcodes, predicts Forrester. In fact this already started to happen in 2010. In February we saw an application called Recognizr which to recognize people and pull up profile information. Both companies involved in Recognizr were acquired in 2010, facial recognition company and interface specialists TAT (The Astonishing Tribe). Metaio combined so you can point your camera at everyday objects and get information about them. More recently, we saw the which translates Spanish text to English (and vice versa) in the camera view in real time.
In spite of these provisos, Forrester is optimistic on the future of mobile AR and expects more blue chip companies to join the AR fray in 2010. Currently the space is dominated by startups. The report points out that Qualcomm . And eBay classifieds.
Funding for mobile AR companies in 2010 went mainly to Layar (which did two rounds, and ) and gaming companies like Tonchidot which .
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