Apple and Path are close to a reaching a buyout agreement, according to a new report from PandoDaily. The social network app would likely be built into Apple Messages to some degree, although details remain unknown.
Path — the mobile only social network that I don’t understand, no one at Cult of Mac uses, and which recently started selling stickers to support itself — has laid off 13 staff members, or 20% of its total staff, in what CEO Dave Morin is calling a “realignment of the company.”
Microsoft is trying to persuade HTC to make new smartphones that run both Android and Windows Phone, and it’s willing to cut or eliminate its own license fee to make it happen. The software giant is hoping the move will encourage consumers to try out the Windows Phone platform and eventually make the switch to it — but could the scheme backfire?
Path has updated its iOS app today to introduce the ability to hide the Friend Progress Bar from your feed. The release also brings the ability to edit your email address and password within the settings drawer, and new stickers and filters.
Path is a social network for our more private groups of friends and family, distinguishing itself from services like Facebook and Twitter in two ways. One, it’s not on any website, as it’s only accessible from your iPhone or iPad. Two, while it can be connected to those services, it does not have to, allowing you to keep things as private as you’d like, depending on the number of people you invite to the service as connections.
The new update, which went live just a few minutes ago, brings a new option to the app settings, allowing you to hide yourself in global search, which will keep even your friends from finding you or your activities if you don’t connect to them directly. This seems like a direct move to help Path feel more private, adding to a previous update, which brought private messaging (and stickers) to the app itself.
Path was recently fined $800,000 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for deceiving its users “by collecting personal information from their mobile device address books without their knowledge and consent.” Last year, the social network was caught storing all of its users’ contacts on its servers under the radar. Now users have started accusing Path of spamming friends to join the service via text message.
Personal social networking app, Path, just released a new icon set into its sticker shop today, called “Iconic Bites.” While the stickers are adorable little bite-sized, pixel-chic representations of food and such, what really makes them cool is that they were created by none other than Susan Kare, the designer of the original Macintosh system icons.
The Path blog posted an interesting interview with her, as well, in which she talks about how her long experience in the design industry has influenced her current designs.
Social media iOS app, Path, updated today to version 3.0.1, adding some new features to the purported all-in-one personal social network’s iOS app. The update adds private messaging along with photo filters and stickers designed by a small group of indie artists for the app.
Path, the mobile social network that first launched on the iPhone in November 2010, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived its users by collecting personal information from their address books without their knowledge or consent. The settlement requires the company to establish a comprehensive privacy program and to have independent privacy assessments carried out every other year.
The company has also been fined $800,000 for illegally collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.
Everybody wants to be Jony Ive’s friend, so he probably gets invited to a lot of the dinners where Silicon Valley’s elite just hangout, scarf down pizza, and get blitzed on wine. We rarely see pictures of such events, but last night a picture was posted of Sir Jony himself hanging out with 11 of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.
The dinner was hosted by Nirav Tolia – a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur – and featured the CEOs of Twitter, Yelp, Path, Dropbox, Yahoo, and other companies. What’d they do besides eat pizza? Did a wild night of karaoke follow over at Marrisa Mayer’s manor? Who knows? Who cares? But we’re glad Jony gets to hangout with people outside the mothership from time to time.
Here’s a list of everyone that was present at the dinner:
We’ve got some great new apps in this week’s must-have roundup, including Path, which finally makes its debut on the iPad; a nifty utility for monitoring the data consumed by your iPhone apps; plus a great new cooking magazine that every foodie should have installed on their iPad.
Path, the popular “personal network” exclusive to smartphones and tablets, has today made its debut on the iPad. With a new interface designed to take full advantage of the iPad’s larger display, Path for iPad “allows for larger moments” and lets you see more of your family and friends on one screen.
A new update to the private social network app Path brings a curious secret feature: you can now automatically import your Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare updates without doing anything. But there’s a catch: you’ll need to sign up for a new account to do it.
Path just pushed out a new update to its iPhone app, introducing a number of nifty new features. Users now have the ability to share their favorite films and books, send personal invitations with their own message to their friends, snap photos using the volume button and then edit them with Path’s new tools, and more.
Antivirus software specialist Bitdefender has found that nearly 19% of iOS apps access your address book without your knowledge — or your consent — when you’re using them, and 41% track your location. What’s most concerning is over 40% of them don’t encrypt your data once it has been collected.
That’s all going to change when iOS 6 makes its debut later this year, however.
Following several security concerns over the way in which iOS apps access and record our data — with the recent Path scandal being the most notable — Apple decided to implement some new privacy settings in iOS 6, which allow you to fine-tune how much of your personal data each of your apps has access to.
Every time you open up a new app that wants access to your contacts, calendars, or any other data, you have to give that app your permission. However, one security director believes this approach will annoy iOS users more than it helps them, and that the new privacy settings are designed to protect Apple from lawsuits rather than its users from data theft.
There has recently been a lot of concern into the way in which our iOS apps access our personal data, and then what they do with it once it has been collected. Since the whole Path debacle in particular, users seem to be more concerned by the issue than ever before.
BitDefender is one security firm looking to capitalize upon that concern with a new app called Clueful, which promises reveal what each of your apps is doing with your data and identify the “misdemeanant apps on your iPhone.”
Many of us feel a deep personal connection with our iPhones, and small wonder: the average person’s smartphone knows more about them than their spouse or significant other. Our iPhones hold our contacts, photos, videos, music, banking data, texts, emails, voicemails, web logins, apps and more. We use our phones to pay our bills, send texts to our girlfriends, check-in to our favorite club, play games with friends, and much more besides.
That makes our iOS devices a juicy target for tracking, and what most people aren’t aware of is that, historically, Apple has made it very easy to anyone to tell what you do with your iPhone. It’s called a Unique Device Identifier or UDID. Every iOS device has one, and using it, third-parties have been able to put together vast databases tracking almost everything you do with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
The good news for privacy advocates is that the days of UDID are numbered. Following the recent stink the U.S. Congress raised over how iOS apps handle a user’s personal information without permission, Apple has given an ultimatum to third-party App Store developers: either stop tracking UDIDs or get kicked out of the App Store. Now ad networks and developers are scrambling to agree on a way to track your device in the future.
But are these replacements any good, or do they pose even bigger privacy concerns than UDIDs did?
Now that Mark Zuckerberg controls your hipster, vintage-inspired photos that you took with Instagram, you might be feeling weighed down with the fear that your favorite photography app will see some major changes. I cried for a few minutes, then I realized that I never used Instagram to edit photos because its filters were actually very limited and pretty crappy. There’s tons of better apps out there. If for whatever reason you’re scared to stick with the new Instagram controlled by Facebook, there are plenty of alternatives to Instagram… and in many ways most of them are better. Take a look at these five awesome Instagram alternatives.
Social network Path came under great scrutiny after it was discovered that the app would upload a user’s entire address book to Path’s servers. The worst part, for iOS users at least, was Path never let them know. After a public apology, Path worked diligently to remedy the issue and came up with a few enhancements to the way they handle user privacy. Today, Path has rolled out an update to both its Android and iOS apps reflecting the changes and assuring users that they take their privacy seriously (or at least now they do).
The app privacy scandal caused by Path’s iPhone app is still leaving its mark, as members of the U.S. Congress have sent out letters to 33 prominent App Store developers to better understand the issue. “We want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple’s mobile devices with a social element.”
Apps like the official Facebook and Twitter clients are among the list. Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman and Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member G. K. Butterfield have requested that the developers behind such apps reveal how Apple imposes its privacy standards and how the standards are implemented.
In addition to the new features we detailed earlier today, Apple’s second OS X Mountain Lion beta adds a nifty security feature that will prevent third-party applications from accessing your contacts without your permission.
Apple has always taken privacy very seriously. When it was discovered that popular app Path secretly uploaded an iPhone user’s entire address book to its servers, the media reacted very strongly and Apple was forced to get involved. Path was violating Apple’s terms of agreement, and it was discovered that many other apps in the App Store had been doing the same thing for quite some time. Apple said that it would clarify the privacy issue for end users with a future iOS update.
High-profile meetings take place at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California all the time, but the public rarely gets to hear about what is said behind closed doors. As it turns out, Path CEO Dave Morin was summoned to Cupertino by Apple CEO Tim Cook to talk about the recent privacy scandal his app caused.
A new version of social networking app Path is now available in the App Store for iPhone users. Path 2.1 features several new features and improvements, including a Shazam-like ‘Music Match’ tool for identifying music playing around you.
The app’s camera features have also been improved with focus and exposure options and a new setting called “Pow!” for creating comic book-style pics. Nike+ integration has been added to let you journal your runs in Path.
