According to Google engineer, Frank Petterson, on his own Google+ profile page, the search giant’s social network iOS apps just got a little more international, as the app just became available in 48 new countries and territories.
Steve Jobs used to like Larry Page and the guys at Google, until they went and made their own smartphone operating system by copying iOS. Steve Jobs was livid. He threatened “to go thermonuclear war” on Google over Android, and the relationship obviously soured.
Now that Larry Page is the CEO of Google, he’s got a lot to worry about, but Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear threats haven’t seemed to bother him. In an interview with Wired’s Steven Levy, Page was asked about competition, and Jobs’ threats of war, but rather than going on an anti-Apple rant, Page’s answer was pretty calm, cool, and collected.
The iPad may be the king of tablets in some markets, but Apple’s device cannot compete with the Nexus 7 in Japan. Its premium price tag is causing tablet buyers to opt for Google’s 7-inch slate instead, despite its smaller display and lack of a rear-facing camera. One survey of Japanese electronics stores has found that the Nexus 7 has claimed 44.4% of the tablet market.
Amidst rumors of a mysterious smartphone and new iPad apps, Facebook held a big press event today at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The topic was search, or more specifically, social search. It’s a new feature Facebook is calling “Graph Search,” and the beta has started rolling out already. It will be available for all of Facebook’s one billion users soon.
Think of Graph Search as Google with a more personal touch. Facebook is leveraging everything it knows about you to help you connect with people who like what you like. Instead of leaving Facebook.com to get your results, all of your social data and timeline history is mined and collated inside Facebook’s walls. That’s good news for Facebook, and bad news for Google.
Facebook is set to hold a press event later today, and it appears the whole thing’s going to be a massive kick in the teeth for Google. Not only is the social network expected to unveil its own smartphone, possibly powered by its own platform, but it’s also expected to hit Google where it really hurts — in search. Rumor has it the company will unveil its own search engine, which will rollout to users “very soon.”
Back in early December, Apple and Google joined forces to purchase a patent trove from Kodak, the once-reigning photography king. Kodak’s collection includes 1,100 imaging patents that can be used to diffuse litigation between big companies in the tech industry.
To keep bidding wars from escalating, Apple and Google teamed up for the purchase. After filing for bankruptcy, Kodak said that its patent trove was worth $2 billion, but the U.S. court approved a $527 million price tag instead.
What the companies involved with this deal plan to do with the acquired patents remains to be seen.
Source: Bloomberg
Next week at CES every tech company in the world is going to cram under one roof and show off all their products that they hope will change the world. Well every company except Apple that is.
Even though Apple won’t have a presence at CES this year, we’ll see their influence everywhere, from ultrabooks to smartphones. But the biggest influence Apple will have on CES 2013 is with a product they haven’t even released yet – the mythical iTV.
Everyone is scared of what will happen if Apple launches an iTV because it will give them a virtual monopoly on all consumer screens (smartphones, laptops, tablets, and televisions). So naturally we’re going to see a lot of Smart TVs as everyone attempts to predict what Apple’s going to do, and then try to get there first.
The battle for smartphone supremacy between iOS and Android has been going on for years now, and even though a host of other manufacturers and operating systems have been introduced, no one has been able to slow down the popularity of the iPhone and Android.
The iPhone continued to increase its marketshare at the end of 2012 according to the latest analysis from comScore. While other platforms shrank in size, Apple’s iPhone now accounts for 35% of the U.S. smartphone marketshare, with Android smartphones taking 53.7%.
While iOS may not be as flexible or as customizable as Android, on the whole it looks a whole lot nicer. Android is steadily improving, that’s for sure, but it’s hard to deny that iOS developers appear to spend more time making their apps prettier, even if you’re a diehard Android fan.
And that was proven when Chris Hulbert, an iOS developer, went to work at Google for three months. In a post on his blog, Hulbert reveals the differences in attitude towards design for iOS and Android, which help explain why Android apps aren’t quite as pretty as they could be.
Apple and Samsung are the only two smartphone manufacturers currently seeing any growth in the United States. The pair are slowly eating away at the market share held by their rivals, including LG, Motorola, Research in Motion, and HTC. In the three months leading up to November 2012, Samsung increased its market share from 25.7% to 26.9%, but Apple is catching up with the Cupertino company enjoying slightly more growth.
Microsoft has beaten Apple and Google to the acquisition of R2 Studios, a small home entertainment technology startup from the founder of Sling Media. R2 is famous for an Android app that allows users to control things like lighting and appliances throughout their homes, and its thought the company’s technology will help Microsoft push its Xbox console even further into home entertainment.
Thanks to affordable offerings like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, Android tablets continue to increase their market share and claw away at the iPad’s lead. However, Apple’s tablet remains king of the web, accounting for a whopping 87% of tablet web traffic in North America.
Picking up a new skill is a very popular new year’s resolution. And this Cult of Mac Deals offer will go a long way in helping you pick up a skill that can bring both pleasure and profit – designing iOS apps.
The iOS App Design Course bundle is just $79 for a limited time, and if you have beginner level knowledge of Photoshop and a desire to learn iOS app design, this course trio will help you quickly learn how to design both iPhone and iPad apps and icons.
While Apple fans will argue that Android copied iOS, it’s hard to deny that Apple didn’t take a little bit of inspiration back from from Android, too. Its Notification Center is an almost identical copy of Android’s — that’s easy to see no matter which side of the fence you’re on. In fact, Samsung’s now using this as another reason to sue Apple in South Korea.
Blake Krikorian, the guy who made the Slingbox, founded a new startup last year called “id8 Group R2 Studios.” Since then, R2 Studios has released an Android app for controlling a home’s heating and lightning with Cestron. The firm also owns some secretive patents relating to remote device and interface control.
According to a new from The Wall Street Journal, a number of big tech companies (including Google and Apple) have been in talks with R2 Studios about a possible buyout:
As Apple slowly but surely turns its back on Google, Siri, its intelligent digital assistant, is doing the same. If you’d have asked Siri a question back in June, there’s a 60% chance the data it came back with would have been from Google. Ask it a question today, however, and that chance is reduced to just 30%. Not only has Apple given YouTube and Google Maps the boot, then, it’s shunning Google’s search data, too.
Apple’s App Store is widely considered the king of mobile marketplaces — even Android fanatics will admit that it offers a greater selection of high-quality apps and games. But it’s Google Play that’s currently seeing the most growth, according to the latest data from app analytics firm Distimo, while the App Store enjoys more than four times as much revenue.
It seems Apple’s problematic new Maps app was discouraging a lot of people from upgrading to iOS 6, the Cupertino company’s latest software. But now that Google Maps is official available as a native iOS app, there’s nothing to stop users from finally performing the upgrade. In fact, its arrival boosted iOS 6 adoption by 29%.
Struggling Kodak has finally agreed to sell its digital imaging patents to Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corporation — two consortiums backed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others — for $525 million. Kodak will receive a portion of the money from 12 intellectual property licensees, with each licensee receiving rights to the patents, while another portion will be paid by Intellectual Ventures, which will then acquire the digital imaging patent portfolio, plus the new and existing licenses.
Android’s market share continues to grow throughout the world, but one country where Google’s platform is having its biggest impact is in China. It’s now the largest single Android market in the world, with one third of all Android devices sold there during 2012. The iPhone, on the other hand, is struggling there.
Back in August, Google-owned Motorola Mobility sued Apple for violating 7 of its software patents. Motorola accused Apple of infringing on patents relating to everything from location-based reminders to email notifications.
Now The International Trade Commission (ITC) has thrown out Motorola’s claim that the iPhone violates a patent on “a sensor that prevents accidental hang-ups,” according to Bloomberg. Motorola’s proximity sensor patent has been deemed invalid by the ITC for the second time, and it looks like Motorola won’t have much luck at appealing the decision.
I’m tired of seeing your crappy vertical videos on YouTube. I mean, I’m not saying the content of your videos are crappy, but black bars on the sides are annoying and they’ve destroyed my desire to watch whatever cute and silly things your cat is doing on YouTube.
The war against Vertical Video Syndrome has been waging for years, yet the horde of black-barred videos that have infested YouTube have continued to multiply. However, in an unexpected move that may finally cure us of vertical videos, Google’s new YouTube Capture app has the greatest video recording feature of all-time – you have to rotate your iPhone into landscape mode before it will let you record a video.
Google just released a new app that is going to make it even easier to share all your funny and embarrassing videos on YouTube. YouTube Capture is a new iOS app by Google that records videos and uploads them to YouTube straight from your iPhone.
YouTube Capture is designed to get videos on to the video sharing service as easily as possible by keeping the interface clean and simple. Once you open up the app it’s ready to record and after you stop recording a video it’s immediately ready to upload to YouTube. It’s simple and awesome.
Here’s a video of how the app works:
Late last week, Instagram — now owned by Facebook — confirmed it had disabled Twitter integration, and the ability for users to see Instagram “cards” or previews in their timelines. While it’s not a massive issue for Twitter users, who will still gets links to Instagram photos, it marks the first major breakdown between the two social services since the Facebook acquisition.
But things could have been very different. Weeks before Facebook bought Instagram, Twitter was close to acquiring the photo sharing service for just $525 million.
So, it’s finally here — Google released an official Google Maps app for the iPhone, and we love it. Not only is it back with a brand new look, it also has new features, and of course, the accurate data we’ve all been missing since Apple released iOS 6. Also in our roundup is a brand new 1Password app from AgileBits, a new Flickr app from Yahoo!, and more.