HTML5 an alternative to Flash for IPad
Mar 30, 2010 News
The biggest drawback and also the greatest potential weakness of iPad is the lack of flash , omission of this feature from iPad was a talk amongst most of the other blogs and users who had planned to buy an iPad.
HTML5 comes as an alternative to Flash , when users would connect to a video sharing platform like Brightcove , it would stream the video in a HTML5 video player when it detects an iPad , but HTML5 cannot perform everything that flash does , like supporting advertisements ,social sharing , customized players and audience measurement . Brightcove CEO Jeremy plans to bring HTML5 video to parity with Flash for anyone using Brightcove .At present the videos will play in a very basic HTML5 player when they detect an iPad, but later on features like audience measurement and advertising would be added to HTML5 versions too .
Ooyala and Youtube are also taking necessary steps to make video content available to iPad users , its something which all video platforms will do in near future .
Tags: apple news, flash alternative, flash games ipad, flash problem ipad, ipad news, video streaming ipad
iPad App Store : An overview
Mar 30, 2010 News
Awaiting for iPad’s release desperately ? If you are wondering how iPad App store experience would be ,take a quick look at the short video clip , gathering a brief info on the iPad App store .
Browsing the iPad App Store : iphonedevelopmementtalk
The iPad App store features the exact same bottom tab bar layout as iPhone’s App store , it also includes a featured page similar to what’s hot page , the iPad App store application details page looks identical to the iPhone’s app store page, with application overview and compatibility with various devices , at the moment screenshots in fullscreen mode are not available for iPad app’s but would be available at the time of launch .
Have a look at few of the screenshots which were discovered when the App Annie folks (an app tracking and analytics site) was “searching for clues” on the device.
Tags: app store review, iPad, ipad app store, ipad news, ipad store overview
Google goes Mapwords – Sponsored Advertising on GMaps Mobile and Web
Mar 29, 2010 News
Google advertisements go beyond adwords , sponsored icons will now be shown on Google maps web and mobile version, this program, which is being launched in Australia for testing, differs from Google’s traditional ad system, these ads (or logos) are not purchased in AdWords-style, but instead rely on number of impressions shown .
Additionally the company should be deemed relevant by Google for their logo to be shown, this will also depend on what product or business user search for and also the rating or positive reviews.
Google is testing such ads in Australia and have set a charge plan, according to which businesses like ATM and fuel/gas stations will be charged less than a relative Retail store .
This is a very innovative and interesting approach to location based advertising. It would be interesting to see what the results are after the testing of such ads in Australia and whether this approach is also implemented in other countries and to what extent does it penetrate in Gmaps.
Tags: ads on gmaps, gmaps news, google maps, maps, new gmaps
Will Kindle Still Give a Tough Fight to iPad
Mar 26, 2010 Uncategorized
Kindle is an e-book reader, excellent for book worms, and they don’t really need fun pictures and colors in a book to make it worth reading, tech geeks would rather prefer iPad over the Kindle which is not as features rich as the iPad.
The talk going on over most of the blogs is “ IPad Vs Kindle “ , according to me iPad is a high end multimedia device , which can play music, supports video playback in various formats , has 3G connectivity , with built in Wi-Fi , Bluetooth, GPS ,and lots more. Kindle no more looks like a comparison for iPad with so many negative aspects, the only feature they share is eBooks.
what does the iPad lack ?
Low Battery life : When compared to Kindle which runs for a week with Wi-Fi and 3G turned on, and up to 2 weeks when these features are turned off, the iPad would give 10 hours backup (as said by apple ) which is still not confirmed , and getting the full 10 hours means doing things that negatively affect the experience (like lowering screen brightness, turning off Wi-Fi, not playing video, etc.).So e-book readers may really not fall for iPad, because of its low battery life when compared to kindle.
Better Display : As seen in kindle the biggest advantage is its E–Ink display which is ideal for reading indoors as well as outdoor in the sun , whereas early reports on iPad tell that it’s great for reading in all situation but reading in all situations and for extended period is still a question.
FREE 3G on kindle : The 3G version of kindle is priced at $259 while the iPad starts at $499 with no 3G support , and for 3G you need to spend more $130 , which is the least priced 3G model on iPad ($ 630), and data plan costs add to this which can be approx. $15 pm . At least kindle comes with free worldwide 3G coverage facility where you can be connected without having you to shed some more bucks and let you even shop for your favorite e-books while on a vacation.
Huge Book Collection : Last but not the least , Amazon currently offers 450,000 books , in addition to newspapers and magazines , which is far more in count than the apple’s list , Of course, the iPad can run Amazon’s Kindle iPad app, meaning it technically does offer the same number of books. But the prices are expected to be higher comparatively.
In short Kindle may still be preferred as an ebook reader which is meant for what eBook readers need the most.
For those who really don’t find it interesting to charge their device after every few episodes of the Book , and don’t want to pay extra for the 3G service on the iPad which kindle provides for free with worldwide reception capability, with a huge and cheaper collection of eBooks will keep rolling for Kindle , meanwhile Amazon is planning a far better browser and a device which would perform much more than the Kindle DX (the most feature rich Kindle in the stores), rumors are also flying regarding Amazon working on a full color multi-touch Kindle , let’s see how Kindle would face this storm and still keep its fan following by coming up with a better idea keeping the needs of eBook readers in mind .
Tags: best ebook reader, comparision, ebook readers, iPad, ipad vs kindle, Kindle, kindle vs ipad
Kindle comes to iPad
Mar 25, 2010 News
April 3rd is not far and with every passing day hundreds of apps are bunching up in the Apple Store.
Kindle App as seen in iPhone has been completely redesigned for iPad. 
Kindle for iPad will allow Apple iPad owners to read Kindle books using a simple, easy-to-use interface. You can shop for hundreds of thousands of books at www.amazon.com/kindlestore and directly read them on your iPad. Amazon has more than 450,000 kindle books for iPad.
The best thing is you don’t need a Kindle to read these books and still you get the best reading experience on your iPad, you can also automatically synchronize your last page read between devices with Amazon Whispersync, adjust text size, add bookmarks and view annotations created on Kindle .
With the launch of iPad many users have been proclaiming the death of Kindle as well as yet to be released e-book readers like HP slate. However, we feel that there’s no actual comparison between them both , because Kindle is a e-book reader while Ipad is more of a multi-functional multimedia device, which also incorporates reading e-books and i-books. Though iPad would continue to satiate the ebook lovers with its reading experience, it would probably be an option for people who wish to use their device for much more than reading while Kindle would continue to be the ebook lovers darling.
Kindle App will be shortly available on Apple store and will be a good news for many of the e-book freaks who have already pre-ordered an iPad but the only point to be checked out would be the battery life. On one hand where Kindle can run more than a week in normal conditions, iPad is estimated to run for less than half a day.
Tags: apps, iPad, Kindle, Kindle app, kindle for ipad
HTC HD 2 Revealed Before Official Launch
Mar 22, 2010 News
The HTC HD 2 no longer stayed a secret till its release date, when a Wal-Mart store sold its first HD 2 with T – mobile as its carrier . The smart phone runs windows mobile 6.5 and will not be upgradable to Windows mobile 7 series platform in future due to incompatible hardware Configuration . Well that’s not a big drawback because Win 7 mobile platform lacks many features and compatibility issues also have been a question .
One HTC fan grabbed his own HTC HD 2 at Wal-mart on SUNDAY in Vancouver Washington and posted a Un-boxing clip on YouTube to tease fellow guys , who were not lucky enough to have a Wal-mart store nearby .
The HTC HD2 is the world’s first Windows Mobile-toting phone with a capacitive screen, and also packs the world’s largest mobile phone display too. It’s also the first WinMo phone to use HTC’s Sense UI, previously used on the company’s Android handsets . The Phone comes with Windows 6.5 , pre loaded 16 GB card , a copy of Transformer s and Transformer 2 and six months of free Gogo in-flight Wi-fi .
In the Box : It comes with a pair of headphones , a micro USB , an adapter and of course the Phone .
You can see the un-boxing clips below
There are a lot of hopes from this phones , in the first review its was almost perfect , the lack of CD is not a big issue , as the software being available on the web as well as the phone .
No Copy Cut Paste Feature in Windows Phone 7 series
Mar 18, 2010 Uncategorized
Windows 7 series phones need to learn how to copy , cut and paste . Microsoft announced at MIX10 that windows series 7 phones would not be carrying Copy – Paste feature. May be it’s the coolest feature Microsoft could wrap up in the new series of phones to disappoint their users. Let’s see how long can they hold their user from getting away with another OS which is more feature rich than the copy-paste lagging windows phone series 7, including iPhone which may just have multi-tasking by then .Indeed it was a really bad idea Microsoft could implement on windows phone 7 series .
“We don’t enable copy and paste and we do that very intentionally,” Windows Phone executive Todd Brix said in an interview.
Brix also repeated many times “when a user copies something on a phone, what they really are looking to do is take a specific action, such as calling a phone number or e-mailing an address. For those specific tasks, Microsoft has what it calls “smart linking,” which lets a user double click on a phone number and either call it or add it to the phone book. For an address, one can get a map without having to copy and paste the address.”
But does it make sense when the device is a smartphone , the question has been raised on many blogs about Windows phone 7 series , “whether it is a Smartphone or not ?”
IMHO, for a phone that is going to handle application like Word , excel , PPT , eBooks , Web browsing , messaging , and basic smartphone features , the concept of Smart Linking doesn’t seem sufficient , take an example of blackberry or Androids , which offer both intelligent linking as well as copy paste features , which seems to be more reliable in terms of productivity .
Brix insists that – “most users won’t miss copy and paste and said that it was a matter of focus; Microsoft said it wanted to really do well the tasks that 80 percent of users wanted.” Users never missed it because users always took this feature for granted unless Microsoft omitted it .
A similar limitation which was found in early iPhone model had to be corrected by Apple by going back again and adding the feature .Lets see how the Microsoft keeps its fans intact , and whether Microsoft plans to provide a update for the same , for disappointed users like me.
Latest in Mobile Development: Lip Reading Mobile Phones
Mar 15, 2010 News
A new face of mobile technology now comes in, placing an end to noisy phone calls.
The development in mobile technology has now lead to a new prototype device that could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations. This technology can measure tiny electrical signals generated my human muscles even when a person does not audibly utter any words, and use these signals to generate synthesized speech in the listeners handset.
Professor Tanja Shultz says “I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought ‘I need to change this’, We call it silent communication.”
This technique called electromyography which detects the electrical signals from muscles is commonly used to diagnose certain diseases, including those that involve nerve damage is used in this Device.The device was demonstrated at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany .
The prototype device that’s on the display uses Nine different electrodes that are placed on the user’s face . “These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles,” explained Professor Shultz. “Those are the muscles that you need in order to produce speech.” These electrical pulses are then passed to device which receives and amplifies them before transmission . These signals are then translated to text , which is in turn used by synthesizer to built audio speech which can be transmitted to users on the other end .
This technology could be packed into a mobile device in future for silent communication and also for instant translation system,”You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into another language,”, says professor.
With this latest development in mobile technology it would be interesting to see how it excites mobile application developers and how they would take advantage of this to create more sophisticated mobile applications.
Tags: mobile technology, Tanja Shultz
Windows Mobile 7 Won't Run Current Applications
Mar 9, 2010 Windows Mobile
Microsoft has reconfirmed that its new software platform for smartphones (popularly referred to by bloggers as Windows Mobile 7) would not be backward compatible. The new phones, expected after August this year, won’t be able to run applications written for older versions of Microsoft phones.
According to Microsoft executive Charlie Kindel, a senior member of the Windows Mobile 7 team, not supporting older applications was necessary to make the new operating system as powerful and user-friendly as possible.
The statement was made on the eve of MIX (an annual event sponsored by Microsoft for developers in Las Vegas, every year in March, and focussed mainly on Microsoft products).
The announcement will disappoint companies that have developed their own software applications for Windows phones issued to their employees. The news also leaves software developers with a difficult choice: either write applications for Windows Mobile 6.5, which is available in the market now but will soon be obsolete, or write for Windows Mobile 7, which is vapourware.
Mobile phone manufacturers today compete by providing an ecosystem (consisting of generally free software tools and a “marketplace”) to entrepreneurial developers to develop and sell all kinds of applications which would attract buyers to their products, and everyone is trying to catch up to Apple’s spectacularly successful App Store. Microsoft is essentially junking thousands of applications written for earlier different versions of Windows Mobile.
This may not be a great loss. Many of those legacy Windows applications have archaic user interfaces compared to the slick iPhone and Android apps of today. Most were also designed for phones that relied on a stylus instead of fingers. Windows Mobile 7 phones are designed for touch screens that work much better with fingers.
iPad Release Delayed Till April
Mar 8, 2010 News, iPad Development
For all those mobile developers that are craving the iPad since Jobs showed it in public, there’s a small bad news – you need to wait till April 3rd before you can get your hands on to the iPad. On Friday Apple announced that iPads would be available in store from April 3rd , which is a few days delay compared to Apple’s earlier announcement of launching the iPad by end of March.
The iPad will initially be available in two versions: WiFi, and WiFi with 3G.According to information posted on the company’s website both can be pre-ordered (from Apple’s online store as well as from Apple’s retailers) from March 13. The WiFi version will be available for pickup on April 3, with the 3G version expected a few weeks later.
There is no change from earlier announced pricing. The iPad WiFi would retail in the U.S. for a $499 (16GB), $599 (32GB) and $699 (64GB). The WiFi 3G models would retail for $629 (16GB), $729 (32GB) and $829 (64GB).
To put the costs into some perspective, tech intelligence firms have estimated that the total bill of materials (BOM) for the 32GB 3G iPad would come to about $290 (typically these numbers are arrived at after disassembling the product, which is not possible in this case as the product is not publicly available).
