Cult of Android - page 55

Douglas Engelbart died this week. But his most iconic idea lives on.

The venerable computer mouse, originally prototyped as a pine box with three buttons and metal wheels, was dreamed up by Englebart fifty years ago.

The mouse has been upgraded and re-envisioned — for example, they don’t use wheels or even trackballs anymore. Some have scroll wheels on top, or side buttons.

But the basic idea of moving a thing over here (to control a mouse pointer over there) lives on. Entire generations have grown up using this funky contraption.

We now suddenly find ourselves in a world of superior alternatives — multi-touch user interfaces (of which Android is the leading brand), voice control and dictation and others.

Yet habit and inertia keep us using Englebart’s brilliant but now-obsolete invention.

It’s time to bury the mouse.

Iceland is so cool. Or weird. Or both.

The land that brought us Bjork and her oddly compelling musical artistry has a new commercial for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that–quite literally–takes a bite out of Apple.

The short ad begins with a poor, sad, white guy in a nice warm vest sitting on a mountainside in what I presume to be Iceland. He’s tapping and listening to an apple. Not an Apple, mind you, but an actual apple, as in the fruit.

After some confused facial gestures, the man is shown smiling and using a Samsung Galaxy S4 device.

That’s when it gets weird.

Apple’s iPhone 5 is “the most hated handset” currently available, receiving the most criticism on social networks, reports British tabloid The Daily Mail. Its biggest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S4, is the most loved — receiving just 11% of the complaints.

An Irish parliamentary committee has dismissed the opportunity to grill Apple and Google over their tax affairs in Ireland, despite requests for a change to the way in which it taxes large multinationals that do business in its country.

The move comes weeks after Apple and Google came under scrutiny for the way in which they use tax “loopholes” or “gimmicks” to avoid paying excessive taxes on international sales. It was revealed that Apple used an Irish subsidiary with zero employees to pay less than 0.05% tax on $78 billion over four years.

Samsung has produced a new Galaxy S4 commercial for Iceland, and it’s possibly one of its weirdest smartphone adverts yet. It features some really strange dancing from a bunch of unconvincing ninjas, and a less than subtle dig at Apple using real apples.

Duolingo is the developer behind a smartphone app for Android and iOS that helps users learn new languages for free. It has a great deal of appreciation for its users, so much so that it went out of its way to help one of them create a unique wedding proposal that they’ll never forget.

The fine folks at Lucky Frame (Bad Hotel, Pugs Luv Beats) have just announced a brand new game, this one coming to iPad and Android July 16th, with a desktop version for Mac and PC soon thereafter.

While there’s a definite shortage of pugs in Gentlemen!, there is definitely a surfeit of pigeons. This here is a frantic two-player game with a Victorian dueling theme, letting you go head to head on the same iPad or Android tablet. You’ll settle your grievance with bombs, knives, and (duh) deadly homing pigeons. You’ll need to find a balance of technique, cunning, and blind panic to come out ahead of the game, and win the duel. It’s two players, one screen, so if you’re lacking in friends, maybe get your pug to play along.

If you’re a science fiction or fantasy fan, and you own an iPad, Android tablet, or other e-reader device, you owe it to yourself to check out the second annual Humble eBook Bundle, with a fantastic selection of genre books ready to go, DRM-free. Oh, and you can pay what you want for them, as well. Which includes, “nothing,” you skinflint.

Details are short on the ground, but The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen is reporting on Twitter that Samsung has purchaseds Boxee, maker of the Boxee Box, one of the Apple TV’s main competitors.

“In today’s world, there’s no reason not to be constantly simulated,” says Samsung. “With Apex, you can be constantly watching movies, browsing Facebook, and receiving head from a robotic mouth, all at the same time.”

An absolutely priceless Onion News Network video, with perhaps the best headline of all time: “New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick.” Check out the video after the jump.

Android’s share of the worldwide smartphone market may be sizably bigger than that of its rivals, but when it comes to mobile advertising, iOS remains king. According to the latest data from mobile ad firm Velti, Apple’s share grew from 59% to 64% between May 2012 and May 2013.

EE, currently the United Kingdom’s only 4G LTE provider, has just announced that it will double its 4G speeds in 12 cities starting tomorrow, July 4. The carrier says that the average connection will increase to between 12 Mbps and 30 Mbps, which is twice the average speed of home broadband in the U.K.

EE has also announced new “pay-for-speed” plans that will allow customers to pay higher fees for faster connections from September.

Egadz is a glitch musician, using video game sounds and samples to create original electronica music. He’s been at it for a while, with a number of releases–some from as far back as 2002–to his credit.

Today, however, Egadz has released an mobile game, with a version on Android, iOS, and Windows 8, based on his new single, “Ghosts,” the video of which can be seen below.

While the U.S. market has been the biggest measure for success with handset makers over the last few years, all of that may soon change as the U.S. smartphone market quickly gets dwarfed by China and others.

According to a new report from ABI Research, China will displace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market by the end of 2013, but just five years later both India and Brazil will pass the U.S. too:

With so much success on Kickstarter, the Pebble smartwatch hasn’t been easy to get hold of if you weren’t an early backer. But you’ll soon be able to pick one up at Best Buy. The retailer just added the device to its website with a $150 price tag, though it doesn’t yet have a release date.

HP famously gave up on its smartphone and tablet business back in 2011 when it announced that it would no longer be developing hardware powered by its webOS platform. But two years later, the company is planning to have another crack at it.

Yam Su Yin, HP’s Senior Director of Consumer PCs and Tablets, has confirmed that the company is already working on a new smartphone — one that will deliver a unique experience that you won’t get from its rivals.

Rumors about a coming smartwatch from Google were fortified this week when The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was, in fact, working on an Android-powered wristwatch, according to people familiar with the matter.

When the Journal starts talking about matters about which people are familiar, you can assume they’re reporting something more solid than rumor. We can move the Google smartwatch likelihood needle up to 95% at this point.

As a heavy user of Google services, I really want a great, Google-centric smartwatch.

But what would such a watch do?

I have a theory. And if my theory is correct, then we should be able to speculate about what the watch’s actual specifications, functionality and user interface will be.

First, the theory.

We had feared that Facebook’s ploy to ruin the Vine party by bringing video to Instagram would work, and according to data from Marketing Land, we were right. Since Instagram began supporting video on June 15, Vine sharing has tumbled by about 70%.

We had expected BlackBerry Messenger to make its debut on Android and iOS on June 27 thanks to T-Mobile U.K., but when it became apparent that the carrier’s announcement was incorrect, we started to wonder just how long BlackBerry would keep us waiting.

But during a quarterly earnings call this morning, CEO Thorsten Heins again reiterated the company’s plan to make BBM a cross-platform service “before the end of the summer.”

While the iPhone has been slowly making its way to carriers all over the world since its release in 2007, there are still a number of major operators that are yet to offer it. One of those is China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier with over 800 million subscribers; and another is DoCoMo, a Japanese carrier that serves almost half of the country’s mobile market.

But DoCoMo isn’t at all concerned, even though it’s losing customers to other carriers that do offer Apple’s device. A company executive has acknowledged that the iPhone is an “attractive” device, but points out that it also comes with some disadvantages, and insists that the latest Android-powered offerings are just as good.

Verizon Wireless has been hard at work rolling out LTE on its network over the past three years or so, but the company announced today that the nationwide 4G LTE rollout is ‘substantially complete.’

With support for over 500 LTE markets, Verizon’s 4G LTE network now covers 95% of the U.S. population. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer says the company isn’t totally done just yet. As reported by PC Mag, Palmer says the company plans to add more services to LTE over the next few years and open new markets:

Apple has lost its bid to add the new Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent lawsuit against Samsung. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal said that adding yet another device to the case is a “tax on the court’s resources,” and that it takes time away from other parties who require the court’s attention.

Microsoft announced earlier this week that it is bringing the PC classic Age of Empires to Android and iOS, and that sparked speculation that the software giant may be into porting Xbox games over, too. But don’t get your hopes up, because Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer has confirmed that it’s not going to happen.

EE has today announced that its speedy 4G LTE network is now available in an additional 11 towns across the United Kingdom. EE now covers 85 towns and cities, reaching more than 55% of the U.K. population just eight months after its 4G LTE network first launched.

Spanish mobile operator Telefonica has partnered with Microsoft in a bid to boost Windows Phone 8 adoption. The two companies plan to launch an “enhanced marketing effort” that will fight back against “the current duopoly” of Android and iOS.