What it is: Yahoo has released a native app for iPhone that seamlessly integrates Apple’s mobile device with Yahoo’s popular photo and video sharing platform, Flickr.
Why it’s cool: With the iPhone having recently become the most popular camera among users of the Flickr service, it should be no surprise Yahoo has produced a nifty native app that makes uploading photos and videos from the iPhone to Flickr dead easy.
The first time users launch the app they are prompted to verify a Flickr account through a Safari browser, after which uploading pics and videos to Flickr servers on-the-fly become easy and intuitive. Uploads can be geotagged, tagged with keywords, and placed into sets – and a user’s entire Flickr stream can be viewed in series or by set and tag.
Maybe you don’t want to upload pics but just want to chill with some eye candy from your own stream, the streams of your Flickr contacts, or from other Flickr users worldwide. Just open the app and it will serve up a handful of images from random users as well as from your contacts and display them in a lovely little “Ken Burns”-style slide show. You can also search your contacts, view recent activity, comment and mark images as favorites.
All in all, the app brings very tight integration between the iPhone and the web service and should make the iPhone even more popular as a Flickr upload device in the coming months.
Where to get it: Flickr for iPhone is a free application, available now on the iTunes App Store.
Whether you were disappointed or elated with the new products and services on Tuesday’s Rock n’ Roll event, you have to admit there was a lot of stuff going on.
One small, almost overlooked new-ish item: “Mayhem” the first standalone digital book is for sale on iTunes 9. (Fortune’s Jon Fortt ran into singer/actor Tyrese Gibson who produced it at the event, or he says he might have missed it, too.)
Although there are plenty of comic book apps and magazines on iTunes, this one is different. Mayhem is more like a book on steroids. For the $1.99 purchase price, you get the comic book, an iTunes LP with an exclusive track, plus storyboards, a making-of video and two freebie comic books.
This is the first digital book that Apple had a hand in designing and it shows — reports say the interface is versatile enough to work as well on a touch-screen as it does on a full-size screen.
The Mayhem iTunes LP was designed by Sam Herz, one of Apple’s user interface engineers for iTunes, and Barry Munsterteiger, creative director for rich media and Internet technologies.
iTunes 9 has neat little new feature: it will automatically import any music or videos you throw into a specific folder.
That folder is called “Automatically Add to iTunes”, and after installing iTunes 9 you’ll find it tucked away inside your “~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/” folder.
Alan Kay, the computing visionary who first envisioned the Dynabook computer concept, worked at Xerox PARC and helped make the original Mac amazing, is one of my favorite technology philosophers. Simply put, he had a way of turning a phrase when discussing the progress of technology that could bring clarity to a muddled topic.
Of all his quotes, my favorite is also one of his most casual. He said that the Macintosh was “the first personal computer good enough to criticize.” In his mind, everything else had been so crummy that to begin listing faults would pretty much convince you that PCs shouldn’t exist at all. Ever since, the mark of an emerging technology’s arrival is the point at which it becomes good enough to begin figuring out what’s wrong with it.
And of all of Apple’s announcements this morning, only the digital album format iTunes LP (also known as Cocktail) qualifies as a major improvement to a nascent technology. Simply put, though Apple long ago figured out how to sell music as digital downloads, it’s taken until now for them or anyone else to get in the ballpark of how to make those downloads feel anywhere near as special as a physical CD or LP.
Having played around with it for a bit (and watched several more demos of albums I haven’t picked up), it’s quite clear that Apple’s made a huge leap forward. And in so doing, it has made it abundantly clear how far they have to go.
Here are five steps Apple could take to make iTunes LP a competitor with your vinyl collection:
1. Get It Off My Computer and On My Devices The nice animation, visuals, video, and lyric displays offered for the first round of iTunes LP are nice and all, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time focusing on my music when playing it back off of a computer. iTunes is a background task most of the time, and even this immersive experience won’t change that — and it’s kind of weird to “page” through liner notes with mouse clicks. The entire look and feel is dramatically more suited to the iPhone or, dare I say it, a tablet computer. If Apple brings multitouch into the equation, maybe the format will restore some of the emotional connection to the tangible object of music in some way. For now, this is some nice animation I’ll never look at again.
2. Offer Lossless Audio Files At this point, the only people who are under the impression that limiting the supply of legitimate digital music actual limits the piracy of music work for record companies, yet it’s nearly impossible to buy truly CD-quality (or better) digital audio from major recording artists online. Apple should use the opportunity presented by iTunes LP to significantly up the quality of its audio to make the music itself sound more special.
3. Make it Simple for Artists to Use Do you know how many iTunes LP titles are available today, the first day of launch? Six. A 43-year-old Bob Dylan record you should already own, a greatest-hits collection from the Doors, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, the new Norah Jones, the new Dave Matthews Band, and actor Tyrese Gibson’s way-autotuned comic book mash-up MAYHEM! Something for everyone, eh? If that somehow isn’t enough music for you, Apple is offering five (5!) additional albums for pre-order.
Yeah.
Clearly, the format is too complex for artists and labels to get behind yet. If you have the budget of Dave Matthews or Bob Dylan, you can have people make it for you, but if you’re pretty much every other artist, taking advantage of the format will take some (or a lot) or doing. If Apple wants this to become a de facto standard for digital albums, it needs to make this a blindingly easy process for artists to participate in — as easy as submitting your record to iTunes for sale. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but it’s a clear key to success.
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Again, iTunes LP is a fascinating effort. But it’s only good enough to criticize. The next year will be Apple’s opportunity to get it right or watch this concept go the way of the enhanced CD.
Singer Nick Cave has a new novel out: The Death of Bunny Munro, a light, cheery, life-affirming tale of the last days of a the eponymous traveling salesman. Just kidding — it’s dark. It’s also available as an audio book and an iPhone application.
But the best part is, guess what he used to write the first chapter?
Here’s a short screencast showing the basic function of iTunes 9’s new app management tool for iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s interesting to compare and contrast this with this app manager concept that we featured here on the Cult back in February.
Most iPhone owners I know have never bothered to sort their apps into any sort of meaningful screen-by-screen arrangement, simply because doing so was too much hassle. This tool will change that, I think, and encourage people to create screenfuls of apps sorted by category.
Have you tried re-arranging your apps yet? What do you make of it?
While some may contend the browser wars are over, Apple certainly ensured the 100,000,000 iTunes account holders Steve jobs alluded to at Wednesday’s “Rock and Roll” event in San Francisco will be downloading the latest version of Safari, whether they use Apple’s browser to surf the web or not.
They’ll download it if they want to use iTunes 9, that is.
iTunes LP — song lyrics, liner notes, photos, and more. Home Sharing — Transfer music, movies, and more between your computers at home. New iTunes Store — The Redesigned iTunes Store. With a great new look, it’s even easier to explore. iTunes Extras — Get an inside look at your favorite movies with new special features. Genius Mixes — Genius makes up to twelve perfect music mixes, automatically. Improved Syncing — Better ways to sync. And a new way manage apps on your Home screens.
Steve just introduced iTunes 9. Available today as a free download, the new version adds:
* iTunes LP — includes videos, lyrics, liner notes, credits, chronologies and other digital content. Tries to recreate the LPs of Steve’s youth. The images are big and colorful, and its interactive. “The photos are amazing.” Thsi doesn;t sound like the rumored “Cocktail” project, which has been tied to the tablet, and is therefore probably a multitouch app. But perhaps iTunes LP is a precursor.
* Home sharing — iTunes lets you copy songs, movies and TV shows among the five authorized computers in your house. Automatically transfers new purchases between computers. This is a nice change. Media management between computers at home is a huge pain, and one of the reasons consumers download pirate content, because there are no DRM headaches. This should make sharing a lot easier.
* Better Syncing — Set up and manage your iPhone/touch Home Screen within iTunes. You manage what Apps go where via drag and drop. Another welcome change. Should make App management a lot easier.
* Redesigned Store — “Cleaner,” says Steve. Bigger images, lots more song previews. You no longer have to drill down to hear a song preview. Store can go full screen, dispensing with the sidebar. “Looking good,” says Gdgt.
* Genius mixes — auto DJ that mixes songs from your iTunes library that it thinks will go well together. iTunes will make 12 by default. Click one, and it’ll play indefinitely.
* Social software — publish items in iTunes to Facebook and Twitter, or send them as gifts.
If Apple wanted to stand the world on its ear next Wednesday at the It’s Only Rock and Roll But We Like It event in San Francisco, the company would announce it is opening iPhone software development to all comers and is dropping the facade of exclusive distribution through the iTunes App Store.
Heresy, you say? Perhaps in the eyes of some, but read on to learn why those two moves would be best for the company, the platform, for developers and – most of all – consumers.
Apple is expected to announce the availability of pre-cut ringtones made from popular music tracks at next week’s media event on September 9, according to a report Wednesday at CNET News.
Despite being able to easily make their own ringtones out of any mp3 file for free, consumers have in the past shown a willingness to pay as much as $3 to hear a few seconds of a favorite song when receiving an incoming phone call.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment for the report and no details are available about what the company might charge for ringtones, but the formerly booming, high-margin source of music industry revenues saw a 24% decline from 2007 – 2008, according to a recent report from the research firm SNL Kagan.
With many expecting little more than some tweaks to iTunes and a possible refresh of the iPod line next week, Apple appears to have done a good job of setting the stage for a blockbuster announcement of some kind.
On the other hand, Apple can’t be expected to put a ding in the universe with every single press conference; maybe what we’ll get next week will only amount to “Hey, Look – Ringtones!”
If the TV industry doesn’t invent a digital business that customers want, it risks an “iTunes moment,” when Apple took hold of the online music business, a Microsoft exec said.
“Realistically. I think the industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment. And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands,” Ashley Highfield, managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, told the Guardian.
Answering the inevitable question of how to make money from these new ventures, he said “media companies need to embrace controversial targeted advertising techniques, such as behavioral targeting based on users’ web viewing habits, with the ad inventory going into an auction-style model similar to the system Google operates.”
Interesting he didn’t name Apple TV — speculated “dead” as Sony and Microsoft entered the market last year — as a specific threat, but spoke of the success of iTunes.
In 2007, a Forrester analyst said both iTunes and Apple TV were “dead ends” that would be “eclipsed by television and cable networks will quickly shift their content to free ad-supported streaming.”
Ha. I tried out Apple TV for about a week while house sitting this summer. The interface was nice, the remote control cool. I’d still rather keep the cheapo PVR with a slightly wheezy fan a friend rigged up — because, while it’s an ugly little box and the remote control works about 40% of the time, there’s no DRM.
Boy Genius Report published Wednesday what the blog reports as screenshots of iTunes 9 sent in by a “tipster”. The screenshots, whose “authenticity cannot be confirmed”, purport to show Facebook integration as well as sync capability extended to a Samsumg mp3 player.
For what it’s worth, a source intimately knowledgeable with the production of Apple help and support documentation told Cult of Mac during a recent conversation not to expect social media integration with the release of iTunes 9, which our source described only as “coming soon”. The most interesting and useful upgrade confirmed for the next version of iTunes is going to be the ability to order and organize iPhone and iPod Touch app screens from the iTunes desktop.
With nearly three weeks until the still-rumored, not-yet-officially-announced Apple Media Event thought to be taking place in San Francisco on September 9, the Apple rumor mill will in all likelihood continue to spit and pop all kinds of interesting ideas. And in all likelihood no one will really know what’s coming until the John Mayer music (or whoever…) fades…
New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority wants to derail an independent iPhone app that publishes train schedules for violation of copyright.
Called Station Stops, the $2.99 app available on iTunes, is the work of commuter Chris Schoenfeld, who also writes the blog of the same name.
The app provides the timetable of the Metro-North Railroad for regularly-scheduled trains departing and arriving from Grand Central Station.
The MTA provides its schedules to Google Transit, but doesn’t release the data publicly.
To build his app, Schoenfeld did it the old way — by entering data manually from the published public schedule.
Schoenfeld, who has often been critical of MTA service, got a nastygram from MTA lawyers ordering him to stop presenting himself as an official service — and pay licensing fees for the schedules.
The MTA reckons the developer owes them a share of profits from the app, back pay the licensing fees. And a $5,000 non-refundable fee.
Schoenfeld’s not interested in ponying up. His sensible David versus ham-fisted Goliath story received a lot of sympathetic local news coverage — but that didn’t stop the MTA from asking Apple to take down the app on Aug. 14.
As of this writing, Station Stops is still for sale.
As one station stops blog reader, Karen Cavanaugh commented:
“I always use Station Stops to check the train schedule when I visit my daughter in Hoboken, NJ. I never think of it as an “OFFICIAL” website. I’ve been to the official website and it’s awkward.”
If you’re lucky enough to live in Pittsburgh, you can report stuff like potholes, graffiti and other everyday annoyances straight to city hall via an iPhone app called iBurgh.
Peeved Pittsburghers first download the app, gratis on iTunes. First time users need to fill in name, phone number, email and home address — stored automatically for logging future complaints.
Users snap pics of traffic gridlock, abandoned cars or whatever. The photos are geotagged and sent immediately to the city complaint hotline 311. Officials hope that if enough people use the app (they already get about 200 rants a day) they’ll have a cluster map of trouble areas to plan for future maintenance and repairs.
It’s the first app available on iTunes from a Carnegie Mellon spin-off whose other product was mobile video technology for sports events, called “yinzcam“ that let users at hockey games pick what to zoom in on with their iPhones.
Apple is expected to announce the availability of pre-cut ringtones made from popular music tracks at next week’s media event on September 9, 
