ITunes Store – Gabriel Catalano®

Why Apple’s Ping Stumble May Help Google Music

The labels, it could be argued, have a reason to hesitate. Apple controls more than 80% of all digital music sales (thanks largely to labels’ inability to innovate), and labels would likely be reluctant to hand over any more leverage in the form of marketing via Ping. If Ping becomes even a fifth of Facebook’s size–and with 160 million users registered on iTunes, it very well could–no label could contain it.

Which leads us to Google. There have been bubblings of a possible iTunes rival from Mountain View (the ballyhooed «Google Music») for some time, but according to several sources, Google’s music service may be available by Christmas–and record labels couldn’t have it soon enough.

BY Austin Carr

Click around for early opinions of Ping, Apple‘s new social network for music, and you’ll start seeing the same complaints: It’s like a crowded room with the lights out; it’s impossible to find your friends, especially without Facebook or Gmail integration; the artist community is non-existent, except for a few Apple partners promoting the service. (Why else would Ping «recommend» we all follow Lady Gaga, Yo-Yo Ma, and Rick Rubin?) Boil it all down, and the early consensus is that the oft-flawless company, with Ping, has stumbled to serve consumers, distanced itself from record labels, and even aided Google. Continuar leyendo «Why Apple’s Ping Stumble May Help Google Music»

Apple Introduces “Ping” Music Social Network and iTunes 10

Ben Parr

Apple has revealed iTunes 10, the newest version of iTunes complete with a new logo, new features and its very own social network for music called “Ping ()” that he described as Facebook () meets Twitter () for music.

Ping allows users to follow others, just like Twitter. You can follow artists or your friends to find out what they’re listening or what they’re creating. It has custom song and album charts, a news feed, 17,000+ concert listings, and is available to 160 million iTunes users. Ping will be available not only for iTunes on the desktop, but for iPhone and iPod touch as well. Continuar leyendo «Apple Introduces “Ping” Music Social Network and iTunes 10»

SideReel Tracks TV Shows Online, Wherever They Are

For those who take the plunge and cancel their cable or satellite subscriptions, there’s certainly no shortage of television shows and movies to watch online. The trick is finding it all.

There are a handful of Web sites that are vying to be the one-stop shop for finding programming on the Web. Some, like the three-year-old site SideReel, are trying to get an edge by not only offering links to legitimate sources of shows, like network sites, but also letting users share links to sites where illegal copies are available for instant viewing.

By JENNA WORTHAM

For those who take the plunge and cancel their cable or satellite subscriptions, there’s certainly no shortage of television shows and movies to watch online. The trick is finding it all.

Replacing a Pile of Textbooks With an iPad

When I’m not blogging away about technology for the Bits Blog, I’m also an adjunct professor at New York University in the Interactive Telecommunications Program.

The program is a technology-focused graduate course, so it came as no surprise when four of my students walked into class in early April with fancy new Apple iPads in hand. After the students got past the novelty factor, a debate ensued about how the iPad would fit into their school life. One factor the students discussed was the ability to carry less “stuff” in their backpacks: the iPad can replace magazines, notepads, even a laptop.

Now there’s an iPad application that could further lighten the load. A new company called Inkling hopes to break the standard textbook model and help textbooks enter the interactive age by letting students share and comment on the texts and interact with fellow students.

By NICK BILTON

Inkling's biology textbook

When I’m not blogging away about technology for the Bits Blog, I’m also an adjunct professor at New York University in the Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Cosmo Releases Sex Position of the Day App For Android, I Release Bile

Do you like sex with other people? Do you like Android? While it is my opinion that those two questions are mutually exclusive, someone, somewhere matches those two criteria. Thankfully, Cosmopolitan Magazine is there for them.

Basically, this is an app that shows sex positions, albeit in a cartoony way. Fair enough. Android is for pornographers, after all. And that’s basically the news, but I’d like to inject a little outrage into this otherwise mundane story.

First, let’s get the throat clearing out of the way. The app features:

– The Carnal Challenge Rating: the more flames a position displays, the greater the difficulty

– Erotic Instructions: hints to help you make the most of the position and what to look forward to

– Colorful Illustration: tasteful visuals that help you understand how the position works

Something so disgusting wouldn’t be available for iOS, would it? Right?

Wrong. It’s also available for the iPhone. Tasteful visuals. Ahem. Carnal Challenge? Erotic Descriptions? Sounds like porn to me. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to blow up.

by John Biggs

First, let’s get the throat clearing out of the way. The app features:

– The Carnal Challenge Rating: the more flames a position displays, the greater the difficulty

– Erotic Instructions: hints to help you make the most of the position and what to look forward to

– Colorful Illustration: tasteful visuals that help you understand how the position works

Something so disgusting wouldn’t be available for iOS, would it? Right?

Wrong. It’s also available for the iPhone. Tasteful visuals. Ahem. Carnal Challenge? Erotic Descriptions? Sounds like porn to me. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to blow up. Continuar leyendo «Cosmo Releases Sex Position of the Day App For Android, I Release Bile»

Livescribe Echo: No Country for Old Pens

Ever since the first caveman scrawled on a wall with stone, people have been looking for a way to improve the writing process. This eons-long evolution has brought us to the Livescribe Echo—a pen that moves handwriting into the digital domain.

The Echo, which sells for $199 (8 gigabytes) or $169 (4 gigabytes), is the second generation of Livescribe’s so-called smartpens. It writes like any other pen. When applied to special paper, however, it digitally captures a precise image of your handwritten notes, sketches, and doodles. It also has a sound recorder for meetings and lectures.

Setup is a breeze. Connect the pen to your computer using a USB cord—accompanying software supports both Windows and Mac OS X—and your uploaded handwritten notes will appear exactly as they did on the page. They’ll be arranged in an iTunes-like application called Livescribe Desktop that lets you read, organize, share, and print them. If you were recording sound simultaneously, the page is presented as a «pencast» on your screen with your words highlighted in synchronization with the sound.

With Livescribe‘s smartpen, even digital doodles can be preserved for digital posterity

By Arik Hesseldahl

Chisel: Photodreams/Alamy; Quill: Sung-Il Kim/Corbis; Fountain Pen: Comstock Images/Agefoto Stock; Ball Point Pen: Open Door/Alamy

Intel’s Silicon and Laser Hook-Up Means Speedier Data Transfer, Reliant on Fiber

Imagine a world where it takes just one second to download a terabyte of data. Well, that world just got a little bit closer, with Intel’s breakthrough, known as silicon photonics, in data transfer methods. It works using a combination of lasers (wooh! Lasers!! And all that!!!) and chips to convert data into light signals, send them up a fiber optic cable, then convert the light signals back into its original data form. So does this really mean high-definition movie downloads in less than a second from iTunes? That, my dears, is a question for the FCC and the network providers, I’m afraid.

Is this the kind of technology which will benefit you, the consumer, or is it something whose goodness will only be felt by they, the companies? Well, it’s a bit of both, actually. First of all, however, there is no doubting the accuracy of the device–Intel claims that over 27 hours, one petabyte of data was transferred with zero error.

BY Addy Dugdale

Imagine a world where it takes just one second to download a terabyte of data. Well, that world just got a little bit closer, with Intel‘s breakthrough, known as silicon photonics, in data transfer methods. It works using a combination of lasers (wooh! Lasers!! And all that!!!) and chips to convert data into light signals, send them up a fiber optic cable, then convert the light signals back into its original data form. So does this really mean high-definition movie downloads in less than a second from iTunes? That, my dears, is a question for the FCC and the network providers, I’m afraid.

Manage and exchange CAD files on the go.

For architects, engineers, surveyors and others who depend on computer-aided design, working remotely typically means gathering data offsite by hand and then bringing it back to the office for input and use with the CAD software installed there. SitePAD is a new iPhone app that aims to change all that by allowing users to create, manage and exchange CAD files on the go

iPhone And iPod Touch Users Lead In Downloading

iPhone users favor free apps

Only 16 percent of Americans over the age of 13 are using devices besides their home computers to download software apps, music, video, and other entertainment content from the Internet, according to a new report by The NPD Group.

The report found three-quarters (75%) of iPhone and iPod Touch users are connecting to the Internet to download entertainment content and apps, compared to 19 percent of game console users and 17 percent of Blu-ray Disc (BD) set-top users.

iPhone users favor free apps

Only 16 percent of Americans over the age of 13 are using devices besides their home computers to download software apps, music, video, and other entertainment content from the Internet, according to a new report by The NPD Group.

The report found three-quarters (75%) of iPhone and iPod Touch users are connecting to the Internet to download entertainment content and apps, compared to 19 percent of game console users and 17 percent of Blu-ray Disc (BD) set-top users. Continuar leyendo «iPhone And iPod Touch Users Lead In Downloading»

Apple’s future won’t be brought to you by the letter ‘i’

: Image via Wikipedia

JULIAN LEE AND ASHER MOSES

Apple has been dealt a severe blow having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter «i» as part of the name for its products.

A trademarks tribunal has knocked back Apple’s bid to stop a small company from trademarking the name DOPi for use on its laptop bags and cases for Apple products.

Apple argued that the DOPi name – which is iPod spelt backwards – was too similar to its own popular portable music player, which has sold in excess of 100 million units worldwide.

Apple has long since relied on its legal muscle to pursue any individual or company it sees as infringing on its copyright and trademarks.

But its ambitions to make widespread claims on the letter «i» came to a grinding halt when the tribunal rejected Apple’s claim that punters might be confused into thinking that they were buying an Apple product.

While the case does not affect Apple’s current trademarks, companies wanting to use the «i» prefix will have a better chance of getting away with it, lawyers say.

It is just the latest in a string of David and Goliath battles. In the one corner is Apple with a market capitalisation of close to $US200 billion, making it the fourth largest publicly traded American company, and, in the other, is Wholesale Central, based in Sydney’s western suburbs that, in the six months to the end of June 2007, had sales of $71,000. Continuar leyendo «Apple’s future won’t be brought to you by the letter ‘i’»

d2u Transcriber Provides a Professional Transcription Service

Back in 2007 we covered Jott, a voice-to-text dictation service available from any cell phone. Since then, Jott has expanded their service offerings to include Jott Voicemail, which allows users to receive their voicemail as email and text messages; Jott for Salesforce, which allows business managers to call and update their salesforce from the road; and a voice-to-text conversion iPhone app. However, Jott isn’t alone in this field. UK-based transcription company dictate2us last month launched their d2u Transcriber app, a fully integrated digital transcription system for iPhones and iPod touch.

The d2u app allows its users to dictate notes directly into their device and upload the audio to d2u’s team of typists, who then transcribe it. Transcriptions are returned by email as Microsoft Word documents, normally within the hour for files less than five minutes long. The app is free to download from Apple iTunes stores. Users are charged GBP 1.50 per recorded minute for the transcription from audio to text.

These apps are shining examples of the opportunities that the iPhone provides as a mobile computing device, and also of the possibilities for adding revenue-driving services to mobile applications. As consumers live increasingly mobile lifestyles, what on-the-go productivity services will we see next?

http://springwise.com/

El triunfo del visionario

Cuando inventan algo en Cupertino, todo el mundo se espera que sea algo revolucionario. Y las expectativas que se ponen en la marca de la manzana no están del todo injustificadas. Tras revolucionar las industrias de la informática, la música y los móviles, Apple ha llegado a los medios para redefinirlos.

Quienes en 2001 pronosticaron que el iPod no era más que otro ‘cacharro’ se equivocaron. En 9 años, el reproductor portátil de música y contenidos se ha convertido en el más vendido de la historia, desplazando al hasta entonces rey, el walkman. Continuar leyendo «El triunfo del visionario»