Nicole Martinelli - page 23

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Are you ready to drop A&T like all those important calls? Or are you going to wait — and see if that new antenna really changes the death-grip issue?

Let us know in the comments.

South Korean film director Park Chan-wook, known for his fantasy-horror flicks, is planning to hit theaters in his native country in late January with a movie shot entirely using an iPhone 4.

The 30-minute short is called “Paranmanjang,” (that’s a “life full of ups and downs” in Korean) and cost about $130,000 to make.

“From hunting for a film location, shooting auditions, to doing a documentary on the filming process, everything was shot with the iPhone 4,” Park said after the screening. “We went through all the same film-making processes except that the camera was small.”

The numbers have been creeping up in the past year, now new data from comScore shows that Android handsets have surpassed Apple in US market share. Android has captured the second largest share of the smartphone operating system market.

In the three-month period from August to November, Android OS market share shot up 6.4 percent, placing it at 26 percent. In that same period, use of the Apple OS grew by 0.8, leaving it slightly behind at 25 percent.

Google’s Android captured the number two spot among smartphone platforms in November, behind RIM with 33.5 percent, down 4.1 percent in the period studied. Microsoft and Palm made slight losses, ranking fourth and fifth with with 9.0 percent and 3.9 percent respectively.

Samsung is still the top original equipment manufacturer with 24.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up 0.9 percentage points from the three month period ending in August. LG ranked second with 20.9 percent share, followed by Motorola (17.0 percent), RIM (8.8 percent) and Nokia (7.2 percent).

The bump in Android OS users comes at a time of growth in the the smartphone market. Some 61.5 million people in the U.S. now carry smartphones, that figure is up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period.

Interestingly, despite all the killer apps available for smartphones, text messaging remained the most used application. While  67 percent of smartphone owners sent text messages, just 35.3 percent used browsers on their phones, though the percentage increased slightly, up from 34.5 percent.

Source: comScore

The million people who downloaded Apple’s Mac Store yesterday are turning themselves into PCs, says Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

“Apple is going on the path to control computer use,” he told Forbes via e-mail, adding that Steve Jobs’ company is “forcing you to use their App Store to get programs.”

Whether you think the Mac App store makes Apple more like Microsoft or not, the confusion generated by the first iteration of the store – our post on what happens when you try to install apps you already have reads like something out of a Windows joke book – is definitely un-Apple like.

Seton Hill University in Greensberg, Pennsylvania was one of the first to announce it would hand out iPads to students – launching the program before the device was even available — now it’s the first enter into legal action against a student over one.

Michael Sellers, 18, enrolled in Seton Hill and was handed his school-mandated iPad and MacBook. He left school shortly afterwards for unspecified reasons.

“On Aug. 18, Michael Sellers signed a contract with Seton Hill University that if he left the university … he would return the iPad within 10 days,” along with the MacBook, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

2010 was the year of the hot Apple auctions, with an Apple 1 fetching its highest price ever, $213,000 to an Italian collector.

What’s next?

Cult of Mac’s own Adam Rosen, a Mac consultant whose vintage mac museum collection counts some 36 different models and about 75 total computers, was asked to opine for AntiqueWeek on the going prices for some popular Apple collectibles.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and design head Jonathan Ive are so close they are called “Jives” around the Cupertino campus for short.

The dynamic duo have been inseparable since the mid-1990s, when Jobs returned to Apple to find a young Ive stuck in a basement surrounded by hundreds of prototypes. Jobs recognized immediately that the company had a great resource that should be put to work.

NPR did a nice piece delving into how Jives have been working together to create some of Apple’s most memorable products.

That little iPhone camera became a something of a big shot in 2010.

iPhone photography broke into art galleries, including an itinerant exhibit in Apple stores, and if Flickr statistics are anything to go by, the humble iPhone camera may sound the death knell for point-and-shoot cameras.

Cult of Mac talked to Knox Bronson, who helped get those iPhone pics in galleries, about how to take better iPhone pics and what’s ahead for iPhone shutterbugs in 2011.

He also shared with us a gallery of favorites from his website, Pixels at an Exhibition, which encourages the use of apps but doesn’t allow for any post-production clean-up with programs like Photoshop.

When Stephen Colbert pulled the soon-to-be released iPad out of a custom pocket in his tux at the Grammys, he set the bar for wearable geek fashion pretty high.

Too high, maybe.

Of all the cool ways you can carry Apple’s new tablet computer, here are five that will earn you a citation from the fashion police and make your blind date run.

Boy those social networks are sticky: a pair of iPhone thieves were caught thanks to Facebook.

Brittany Busby, 19, and Todd Beede, 28, strolled into an AT&T store in downtown Montpelier, Vermont at around 2 p.m. and started checking out the phones.

They grabbed a $700 iPhone and ran off – but were caught because they couldn’t resist logging into Facebook on another phone in the store but forgot to sign off.

A library in Australia has converted conference rooms into rumpus rooms — popular with teens who come to sing along with iPods, play games on iPads and watch pay TV.

The Campbelltown Library in Newton, a suburb of Adelaide, is hoping to attract more teens and make the library “less boring” by lifting the usual shsssh! and keeping conference rooms open to gadgets until 11 pm.

“I usually go to do research for school projects,” says Sam, 15. ” But I think it’s cool you can use technology and not be scared to make a little bit of noise.”

There’s a lot more happening in the Cupertino-centric world than the usual porn-unboxing videos and edible iPhones: here are the most bizarre moments involving Apple in 2010 — from severed appendages to exploded iDevices as art and spy evangelists.

This morning the Federal Communications Commission is voting on the charged issue of net neutrality.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wrote a passionate, funny nearly 1,800-word letter to the FCC about the importance of keeping the internet free.

Perhaps the strongest part of the letter is where he muses about how charging per bits would’ve kept the tinkering he and Steve Jobs did strictly in the garage:

“Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use.

The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway…”

Via The Atlantic

Smurfs’ Village, the iPhone/iPad game a lot of parents point the finger at for accidental in-app purchases, has now added a few warnings.

The first sentence of the game description now reads:

“Smurf Village is free to play, but charges real money for additional in-app content. You may lock out the ability to purchase in-app content by adjusting your device’s settings.”

Proving that home electronics are driving that gift-laden 2010 sleigh, the iPad is credited with a sales spike this holiday season.

Comscore reports that computer hardware is the top growing category for the 2010 holiday season to date with a 25-percent increase over last year. Shoppers snapping up handheld devices (such as Apple iPads and e-readers) and laptop computers account for much of the growth.

The one-size-fits-all ease of electronic gifts were also behind the record numbers for e-spending: $27.46 billion was spent online, a 12-percent increase over the same days last year. Free Shipping Day also proved appealing, merchants throwing that in increased sales by 61-percent over the same day last year.

If you can’t get anyone to watch your ho-hum videos, a new iPhone app can pixelate or bleep that turkey carving moment to make it look like something out of “Sh*t My Dad Says.”

It’s the latest from Darren Murtha and partner Chris Lott, who created the Shape Builder app to keep his four-year-old amused. Murtha tells us he was inspired to make this $1.99 app by a Sesame Street video that was unnecessarily censored.

“Even before the iPhone had video editing capabilities, I wanted to develop the app. After Apple released API to help code video editing, then it became a reality.”

The basic idea: even if your video recordings are strictly PG-13, you can still have some good fun (preferably at someone else’s expense) with the app.

What goes around comes around: one of the disc jockeys busted with running a six-figure iTunes scam has admitted his role.

Lamar Johnson, 19, admitted he was involved in this modern take on chart rigging, pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud in court.
Nine British djs are charged with using 1,500 stolen or cloned credit cards to buy their own tracks to the tune of £500,000 (about USD $780,000). They were paid £185,000 (USD $288,000) in royalties before getting caught.

Should your six-year-old have an iPad? At least one educator says yes.

“Think of devices like the iPad, and its little brother, the new camera-equipped iPod Touch, as the bicycle of the digital age,” said Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review and an educator, education researcher and parent. “These devices are at the center of a modern child’s play. They capture and manage information.”

Buckleitner made the statement in response to a parent who wonders whether fulfilling the request from her Montessori-educated first grader for “an iPad like her daddy has” is a good idea.

In these topsy-turvy tech days, when some media titans are betting that digital will bring the end of print publications as we know them, the iPad is playing a pivotal role.

Apple’s “magical” tablet is one of the first consumer electronic devices to act as an unobscured window for the transmission of words and ideas.

“The iPad’s design is attractive, but without flourish or adornment: masterfully subtle construction and invisible tech forms a unibody frame to a vaster world that it both conveys and crystallizes. Every iOS device features only a single interface button, so it’s minimalist to the extreme.

With every app you call up, you gaze into a different world… sometimes local to your device, sometimes transient, sometimes alien and far beyond. The device itself, though, is only meant to be a complimentary and attractive frame, perfectly realized to the purpose of conveyance.”

CoM’s own John Brownlee has much to say about Chrome, the iPad and the Crossroads of Civilization in his maiden column over at Gearfuse, check it out.

The US Army wants to equip soldiers with smartphones as a part of their standard equipment – leaving it up to individuals to decide which one they want.

The Army would issue these smartphones just like any other piece of equipment a soldier receives and pay the bills, too. Two types would be offered, the iPhone or an Android phone.

“One of the options potentially is to make it a piece of equipment in a soldier’s clothing bag,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center.

Epic Games, the company behind such diversions as “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Gears of War 3″ is releasing tools for developers to meet demand for iPhone and iPad games.

The company will launch the latest version of its game-development tools, called the Unreal Development Kit, to the public Thursday. The free to download kit will include new tools to create high-quality graphics and animations on iOS, which should simplify and speed up the development processes for games.

“Apple’s App Store is the most vibrant market for mobile gaming,” said Epic Chief Executive Mark Rein. “If you’re going to make a game for a mobile device, and you want to make the most money, you’re nuts not to make it for iOS.”

The media is a-twitter with reports that Apple’s new iPad will have both a front-facing and rear-facing camera, with Reuters quoting anonymous sources in the supply chain.

I don’t buy that: I don’t think that Apple will imitate the ‘competitors,’ like Samsung Galaxy or Acer whatever-they-name-it.

Apple is ahead of the curve, it doesn’t follow. The thing is that a rear-facing camera in such a device is not useful and adding it only because others have it is not Apple’s style.

Not sure that Saint Nick has much sway over Steven P. Jobs, but maybe if you put this white iPhone ornament on your tree he’ll get the hint.

The handmade ornament (only six available!) comes with magnets on the back, so it can go up on your fridge once the holidays are over. It’s smaller than the real thing, measuring 3″ x 1.5″ and also available in black.

The ornament’s also a nice idea if you want to say you’re going to give your beloved one, but have to wait for the spring 2011 launch.

$10 on Etsy.

Via iPhone Saviour

Angry Birds Lite is the top downloaded free game on iTunes in 2010.

The pigs-vs-infuriated-fowls diversion beat out Tap Tap Revenge 3, PacMan Lite and Rockband in iTunes Rewind, which highlights the most popular games, music, apps and TV programs in the iTunes Store for 2010.

Angry Birds was also the second most popular free iPhone download overall, trailing Facebook but coming in ahead of Skype and The Weather Channel.

And it’s not just an addictive freebie, either: Rovio’s Angry Birds, the $0.99 version, is also one of the top grossing apps overall.

Its feathered fury is more popular than Call of Duty: Zombies, Tom Tom, Plants vs. Zombies, Tetris and Doodle Jump.

On the wings of this success, Rovio has just announced that they intend to launching Bad Piggy Bank, a new in-game payment system which will allow Angry Birds players to make in-app purchases without going through Apple.
Rovio’s goal is to divorce the game’s in-app purchase system from a reliance upon a credit card. Bad Piggy Bank, then, will launch in Finland (where Rovio is based) on Elisa, the country’s biggest telecom provider, and any in-app purchases will be added to their monthly bill, or even purchase other games, with other countries and telecoms to follow.

It will be interesting to see if this gets Rovio into trouble with kids making in-app purchases. Apple’s policy has been to allow kids’ games to have them, but generally refunds the money to parents if they complain about kids unwittingly buying stuff in apps.

Via iTunes

Though it can’t croon, the iPad is more popular as shaggy-coiffed teen idol Justin Bieber – at least in Google searches.

Google released results of its annual Zeitgeist findings, which capture key search trends, using Google’s Insights for Search and Google Trends data analytics tools.

Google’s top two fastest rising queries worldwide are both tech-related: Chatroulette and Apple’s newest product, the iPad.

Rounding out the top five are Justin Bieber, wardrobe challenged-popster Nicki Minaj and game site Friv.

The iPad and the iPhone were also the top two fastest rising searches in consumer electronics, trailed by Nokia 5530, HTC Evo 4G and Nokia rounding out the top five.

The Evo 4G was the only major Android phone to break into the top 10 global consumer electronics searches.

Via eweek, Google