Facebook Goes Audible on the iPad with Friends Aloud HD

Austin, Texas – Apple iPad owners can now access and listen to their Facebook news feed via Friends Aloud HD, created by VoiZapp, Inc. It is the first iPad app to bring optimized state of the art text-to-speech technology to Facebook. Using Friends Aloud HD, a user can:

* Read aloud their latest Facebook news feed posts and their associated comments in a pleasant, easy-to-understand young woman’s voice
* Scroll through each post on screen or tap around to read posts at random
* Automatically switch between reading existing posts in sequence or just reading new posts as they arrive for as long as desired
* Play, pause, and skip forward/back using intuitive controls, just like the iPod app
* Continue reading aloud while in the background, just like the iPod app
* Understand and read common computer jargon such as smiley faces and texting-style abbreviations (LOL, ROTFLMAO, happy/sad faces, etc.)
* Choose to limit the number of comments read aloud

“Facebook has become an integral part of peoples’ lives, and mobile has fundamentally changed the way they access and use social networking services”, said Dr. Robert B. Wesson, Voizapp’s CEO. “You can now stay in touch with your Facebook friends while safely using your iPad on the go – while driving, walking, exercising, or working – anywhere your eyes are otherwise occupied. Friends Aloud HD also gives the visually-impaired and elderly an audible window into their friends’ and families’ lives.”

Device Requirements:
* Compatible with iPad
* Requires iOS 3.2 or later
* 57.9 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Friends Aloud HD 1.1 is $2.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Social Networking category.

VoiZapp
Friends Aloud HD 1.1
Purchase and Download
YouTube Video
Screenshot
App Icon

Founded in 2010, VoiZapp Inc. is a software development company located in Austin, Texas. We have been developing software for personal computers for literally decades, from games to million-dollar professional training systems sold to governments and institutions around the world. We are now passionate about developing speech-enabled mobile software for Apple’s iOS platform that powers the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. Copyright (C) 2011 VoiZapp Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Source :  ipadnewstracker

Read more »

Facebook Goes Audible on the iPad with Friends Aloud HD

Austin, Texas – Apple iPad owners can now access and listen to their Facebook news feed via Friends Aloud HD, created by VoiZapp, Inc. It is the first iPad app to bring optimized state of the art text-to-speech technology to Facebook. Using Friends Aloud HD, a user can:

* Read aloud their latest Facebook news feed posts and their associated comments in a pleasant, easy-to-understand young woman’s voice
* Scroll through each post on screen or tap around to read posts at random
* Automatically switch between reading existing posts in sequence or just reading new posts as they arrive for as long as desired
* Play, pause, and skip forward/back using intuitive controls, just like the iPod app
* Continue reading aloud while in the background, just like the iPod app
* Understand and read common computer jargon such as smiley faces and texting-style abbreviations (LOL, ROTFLMAO, happy/sad faces, etc.)
* Choose to limit the number of comments read aloud

“Facebook has become an integral part of peoples’ lives, and mobile has fundamentally changed the way they access and use social networking services”, said Dr. Robert B. Wesson, Voizapp’s CEO. “You can now stay in touch with your Facebook friends while safely using your iPad on the go – while driving, walking, exercising, or working – anywhere your eyes are otherwise occupied. Friends Aloud HD also gives the visually-impaired and elderly an audible window into their friends’ and families’ lives.”

Device Requirements:
* Compatible with iPad
* Requires iOS 3.2 or later
* 57.9 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Friends Aloud HD 1.1 is $2.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Social Networking category.

VoiZapp
Friends Aloud HD 1.1
Purchase and Download
YouTube Video
Screenshot
App Icon

Founded in 2010, VoiZapp Inc. is a software development company located in Austin, Texas. We have been developing software for personal computers for literally decades, from games to million-dollar professional training systems sold to governments and institutions around the world. We are now passionate about developing speech-enabled mobile software for Apple’s iOS platform that powers the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. Copyright (C) 2011 VoiZapp Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Source :  ipadnewstracker

Read more »

Nook Color: An Unexpected Competitor for the iPad

Want an Apple iPad but can't afford the minimum $499 entry fee? Look to Barnes & Noble's Nook Color, which was upgraded recently to offer many tablet features at $249.

The Nook Color, which until May had been marketed primarily as an electronic book reader with extra features, now is being marketed as a tablet specifically made for book lovers.

With the software upgrade introduced just over a month ago, the Nook Color now offers decent Web browsing, email, games, music and video playback. Oh, and it's an e-reader, too.

When looked at as a tablet rather than an e-reader, it turns out the Nook Color is the iPad's biggest competitor, capturing half the non-iPad tablet market with some 3 million units shipped, compared with iPad's 20 million for the last year.

By comparison, the overpriced Motorola Xoom, which captured a lot of press a few months ago as the first serious competitor to the iPad, is a flop: only something more than 100,000 units are estimated to have shipped since its introduction.

The Nook Color is no iPad 2. It has a 7-inch display, to the iPad's 10-inch. Its processor is far less powerful, it has less onboard memory and no cameras, no GPS, no 3G data connectivity and less battery life. The recently opened B&N app store offers fewer than 200 apps, compared with some 5,500 apps for the iPad.

But as a wi-fi tablet running Google's Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, the Nook Color doesn't suck. It surpasses the iPad in some areas. It can run Flash applets that give the Web so much of its interactivity, for instance, including streaming Web video; Apple has chosen not to support Flash.

It has a slot capable of holding a 32-gigabyte SD Card, greatly supplementing its 8-gig internal memory. The iPad doesn't have one. As for its display, the smaller 7-inch form is seen by some as a portability advantage and the color screen is higher resolution than the iPad.

It can run “Angry Birds,” the most popular mobile game around.

Although Netflix isn't yet available to stream movies, with the large installed base I would be surprised not to see a version for Nook Color soon. In fact, tech enthusiasts—who for months have “rooted” the Nook Color and used it as a tablet before B&N offered its upgrade–say the Netflix Android app runs easily on the Nook.

Oh, and it's an e-reader, too. While the iPad was seen at its introduction as offering strong competition to Amazon's Kindle e-reader, it turns out the various versions of the Nook have provided the real competition.

Amazon still dominates the e-book market, with 60 percent to 65 percent of e-books sold, according to publishers at the recent BookExpo America annual conventon in New York. Apple is at about 10 percent of the market, while Barnes & Noble surprised publishers by grabbing 25 percent with the Nook.

The biggest buyers of the Nook Color have been women, who prefer its color display to the black-and-white e-ink display of the Kindle and other e-readers for browsing women's magazines, according to a recent New York Times article. Some of the strongest-selling titles for the Nook Color are digital versions of woman-focused magazines like Cosmopolitan and Women's Health.

And, women like the handbag-friendly smaller size of the Nook Color, making it easy to carry along.

The strong showing by the Nook Color could even help save B&N's ailing print bookstores. Not long after introducing the tablet upgrade, Liberty Media offered to buy 70 percent of B&N at $17 a share. Insiders said Liberty's interest was almost entirely in the potential of B&N's Nooks.

Amazon reportedly has taken notice, and has contracted with a manufacturer to build its own color Android tablets to be introduced for the holiday season this year.

So, should Apple be worried about this iPad competition? Or should Amazon be worried about this Kindle competition?

Who knows, but in the meantime Barnes & Noble is enjoying having the Nook Color stuck squarely in the middle.

Source : lamesapatch

Read more »

Nook Color: An Unexpected Competitor for the iPad

Want an Apple iPad but can't afford the minimum $499 entry fee? Look to Barnes & Noble's Nook Color, which was upgraded recently to offer many tablet features at $249.

The Nook Color, which until May had been marketed primarily as an electronic book reader with extra features, now is being marketed as a tablet specifically made for book lovers.

With the software upgrade introduced just over a month ago, the Nook Color now offers decent Web browsing, email, games, music and video playback. Oh, and it's an e-reader, too.

When looked at as a tablet rather than an e-reader, it turns out the Nook Color is the iPad's biggest competitor, capturing half the non-iPad tablet market with some 3 million units shipped, compared with iPad's 20 million for the last year.

By comparison, the overpriced Motorola Xoom, which captured a lot of press a few months ago as the first serious competitor to the iPad, is a flop: only something more than 100,000 units are estimated to have shipped since its introduction.

The Nook Color is no iPad 2. It has a 7-inch display, to the iPad's 10-inch. Its processor is far less powerful, it has less onboard memory and no cameras, no GPS, no 3G data connectivity and less battery life. The recently opened B&N app store offers fewer than 200 apps, compared with some 5,500 apps for the iPad.

But as a wi-fi tablet running Google's Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, the Nook Color doesn't suck. It surpasses the iPad in some areas. It can run Flash applets that give the Web so much of its interactivity, for instance, including streaming Web video; Apple has chosen not to support Flash.

It has a slot capable of holding a 32-gigabyte SD Card, greatly supplementing its 8-gig internal memory. The iPad doesn't have one. As for its display, the smaller 7-inch form is seen by some as a portability advantage and the color screen is higher resolution than the iPad.

It can run “Angry Birds,” the most popular mobile game around.

Although Netflix isn't yet available to stream movies, with the large installed base I would be surprised not to see a version for Nook Color soon. In fact, tech enthusiasts—who for months have “rooted” the Nook Color and used it as a tablet before B&N offered its upgrade–say the Netflix Android app runs easily on the Nook.

Oh, and it's an e-reader, too. While the iPad was seen at its introduction as offering strong competition to Amazon's Kindle e-reader, it turns out the various versions of the Nook have provided the real competition.

Amazon still dominates the e-book market, with 60 percent to 65 percent of e-books sold, according to publishers at the recent BookExpo America annual conventon in New York. Apple is at about 10 percent of the market, while Barnes & Noble surprised publishers by grabbing 25 percent with the Nook.

The biggest buyers of the Nook Color have been women, who prefer its color display to the black-and-white e-ink display of the Kindle and other e-readers for browsing women's magazines, according to a recent New York Times article. Some of the strongest-selling titles for the Nook Color are digital versions of woman-focused magazines like Cosmopolitan and Women's Health.

And, women like the handbag-friendly smaller size of the Nook Color, making it easy to carry along.

The strong showing by the Nook Color could even help save B&N's ailing print bookstores. Not long after introducing the tablet upgrade, Liberty Media offered to buy 70 percent of B&N at $17 a share. Insiders said Liberty's interest was almost entirely in the potential of B&N's Nooks.

Amazon reportedly has taken notice, and has contracted with a manufacturer to build its own color Android tablets to be introduced for the holiday season this year.

So, should Apple be worried about this iPad competition? Or should Amazon be worried about this Kindle competition?

Who knows, but in the meantime Barnes & Noble is enjoying having the Nook Color stuck squarely in the middle.

Source : lamesapatch

Read more »

Samsung Wants To See the Next iPhone & iPad

The Apple-Samsung patent infringement lawsuit is heating up: Samsung’s lawyers have filed a motion for Apple to provide them with a sample of the next generation iPhone and iPad.

Since Apple keeps very tight wraps around all its upcoming products, it’s highly unlikely that the company will comply with this request, at least without a fight. However, recently Samsung was ordered by a judge to give Apple samples of its yet unreleased tablets and smartphones, including the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Add to that the fact that Samsung has also filed a countersuit against Apple citing several patent infringements, and suddenly Samsung’s claims don’t seem that far-fetched.

Nilay Patel examined Samsung’s request and he found some subtle differences between the two requests: Samsung products that Apple requested to see were publicly announced, while Samsung wants to see Apple’s products which are unannounced and – if you disregard the rumor mill – officially do not exist.

Either way, if the motion is successful, only Samsung’s lawyers – not even Samsung itself – would see Apple’s products, and the chances of any info leaking out into the public are very slim.

Source : mashable

Read more »

Samsung Wants To See the Next iPhone & iPad

The Apple-Samsung patent infringement lawsuit is heating up: Samsung’s lawyers have filed a motion for Apple to provide them with a sample of the next generation iPhone and iPad.

Since Apple keeps very tight wraps around all its upcoming products, it’s highly unlikely that the company will comply with this request, at least without a fight. However, recently Samsung was ordered by a judge to give Apple samples of its yet unreleased tablets and smartphones, including the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Add to that the fact that Samsung has also filed a countersuit against Apple citing several patent infringements, and suddenly Samsung’s claims don’t seem that far-fetched.

Nilay Patel examined Samsung’s request and he found some subtle differences between the two requests: Samsung products that Apple requested to see were publicly announced, while Samsung wants to see Apple’s products which are unannounced and – if you disregard the rumor mill – officially do not exist.

Either way, if the motion is successful, only Samsung’s lawyers – not even Samsung itself – would see Apple’s products, and the chances of any info leaking out into the public are very slim.

Source : mashable

Read more »

Over dependence on iPhone, iPad, Android apps may lead to anxiety: Expert

MELBOURNE: Though technology has made our lives convenient and fast, psychologists warn people against developing an over-reliance on mobile and tablet applications.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists chairman Daniel Varghese suggests smartphone users need to be wary of relying too heavily on their applications.

"It's a general phenomenon that we're relying more and more on technology, and when that technology's not available, we don't use the skills we would have otherwise developed," The Courier Mail quoted him as saying.

"That can certainly cause anxiety in people."

At a time when Google's Android Market is racing to catch up with Apple's ever-expanding App Store, consumers are increasingly incorporating applications into every part of their lives.

The uses range from helping tie their ties to calculating the amount of kilojoules on their plate.

Prof Justin Kenardy from the University of Queensland suggests that it is important for users in keep in mind that they would not always have access to their applications.

"There needs to be an awareness that it's not always going to be there," he said.

Mobile technology expert Associate Professor Sam Bucolo from the Queensland University of Technology further added that applications were likely to start emerging at an even greater rate. 

Source : economictimes

Read more »

Over dependence on iPhone, iPad, Android apps may lead to anxiety: Expert

MELBOURNE: Though technology has made our lives convenient and fast, psychologists warn people against developing an over-reliance on mobile and tablet applications.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists chairman Daniel Varghese suggests smartphone users need to be wary of relying too heavily on their applications.

"It's a general phenomenon that we're relying more and more on technology, and when that technology's not available, we don't use the skills we would have otherwise developed," The Courier Mail quoted him as saying.

"That can certainly cause anxiety in people."

At a time when Google's Android Market is racing to catch up with Apple's ever-expanding App Store, consumers are increasingly incorporating applications into every part of their lives.

The uses range from helping tie their ties to calculating the amount of kilojoules on their plate.

Prof Justin Kenardy from the University of Queensland suggests that it is important for users in keep in mind that they would not always have access to their applications.

"There needs to be an awareness that it's not always going to be there," he said.

Mobile technology expert Associate Professor Sam Bucolo from the Queensland University of Technology further added that applications were likely to start emerging at an even greater rate. 

Source : economictimes

Read more »

Can the iPad and iPhone Rescue the Cloud?

The hype on the cloud is just as loud as the hype on mobile computing. Both appear to be gold rush destinations for vendors seeking to capitalize on all the stuff that buyers allegedly can’t get enough of. But if you look at the numbers, you see that mobile is where the money is being made, while the entire cloud market pulls in about 1 or 2 percent of what mobile does.


It seems to me that the cloud needs to be rescued, and perhaps mobile a la iPad, iPhone, and Android is the technology to do it.

[ Keep up on key mobile developments and insights via Twitter and with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter.]

The numbers overwhelmingly point to mobile’s bulging bank account
But first, let me detail the numbers. Cloud services brought in about $3 billion in 2010 from its three main components: infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and software (SaaS) offerings. In IaaS, Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) made about $500 million in 2010, and Rackspace — the No. 2 IaaS provider — raked in about $100 million. SaaS did better: Salesforce.com pulled in $1.3 billion in 2010, with the other four major SaaS providers — NetSuite, RightNow, SuccessFactors, and Taleo — earning about $200 million each. Revenues for PaaS offerings — exemplified by Salesforce.com’s Force.com and Microsoft’s Azure — aren’t broken out but are widely believed to be minuscule.

I’m not counting sales of so-called private cloud technology, as that means pretty much anything in a data center, which covers most of what IT’s expenditures ($1.5 trillion on tech last year). Whether you think a private cloud is a real cloud or just marketing buzz for the same old server, storage, and network gear (using virtualization, of course!), it’s money that IT would be spending anyhow. Even if you decide that virtualization spend should be counted as cloud spend, that adds “only” about $5 billion to the cloud total, bringing it to $8 billion.

Now to some real money: Mobile technology brought in $173 billion in 2010 from its major sources: $62 billion in 3G data plans, $99 billion in smartphone sales ($29 billion to Apple, $20 billion to Nokia, $15 billion to Research in Motion, and $9 billion to Samsung), $10 billion in tablet sales (almost all iPads last year), and $2 billion in app sales ($1.7 billion to Apple alone). Note that I’m not including iTunes and similar music, book, and video sales via mobile devices, as they can be accessed on both PCs and mobile devices. If you’re curious, they added up to $8 billion, with $4.1 billion going to Apple and $3.3 billion going to Amazon.com, including for the Kindle hardware.

How the cloud can hitch itself to the mobile bandwagon
As these numbers show, when you look at the whole mobile market, the cloud appears downright sickly as a business. Maybe mobile can help. After all, what other computing platform is more dependent on the cloud concept than mobile?

Let’s start with the obvious: storage. Although mobile devices have local storage, they’re not anywhere near as capacious as PCs — and a lot of that space is taken up by all your music. Mobile users should be helping drive the cloud storage business, to companies such as Box.net and Dropbox.

On the consumer side, Google is moving in that direction as well for its Music Beta service, and rumors are rampant that Apple plans an iCloud service that will merge its MobileMe storage/collaboration service with a new iTunes-in-the-ether service. In the not too distant future, you may have most of your data living on a personal storage cloud and a business storage cloud service for access anywhere by pretty much any computer or mobile device. Here’s an opportunity for an Amazon.com to grow its IaaS business.

Then there’s SaaS, which is where the big money (relatively speaking) is today in the cloud. With HTML5 now widely deployed, it’s time for SaaS and traditional providers alike to get cracking on really usable Web apps that auto-adjust to your mobile device of choice. Rather than sell an app once for $5 or so, developers could charge subscriptions for mobile Web apps and have that recurring revenue to keep making them better. Given that updates are free to iOS and Android apps, at some point native-app developers are going to run out of customers and, thus, income to pay for continued enhancements. Switching to SaaS could fix that — and help both developers and the cloud market.

Apple could be an ally here, as it already has a subscription model in place. Sure, it’ll charge you 30 percent, but that gives it a huge vested interest to encourage app purchases — it makes more money when developers do. There’s a reason Apple made 16 times as much money from app sales as Google did last year, despite the Android smartphone sales surge. Imagine if Apple’s revenue-sucking magic were applied to SaaS apps!

Beyond SaaS are all the other possible services that mobile users would need a cloud to access: navigation, for example. AT&T charges $10 a month for its mobile navigation service. That model could be extended to almost anything: videoconferencing — after all, you’re already paying for voice and data subscription, so why not video? — radio and TV streaming, travel information and management, and expense reporting, especially if mobile payments happen. It’s too bad Google is all about destroying competitors with free services and then selling ads to deliver to us — it could drive a lot of cloud revenue if it put together a monthly Google Mobile service that included a Yellow Pages-like facility and a collection of such services.

OK, I’m being a little facetious, but on the serious side, the whole cloud mentality is about charging people to rent resources rather than buy them once. That’s why vendors love the idea; they can make a lot more money if you keep paying for a service rather than buy — er, license software. Long ago, enterprise software vendors realized they could collect rent on the software they sold by instituting (required) maintenance plans. Now consumer software makers are getting a clue: Adobe Systems recently unveiled subscription offerings for Creative Suite that effectively double or triple the price.

That is where mobile can perhaps help the cloud the most: It’s trained people and companies to pay a monthly fee for access (your $30 or whatever a month additional cost for data access), as well as to keep an active credit or debit card for impulse shopping (such as via the iTunes Store, Kindle Store, and Android Market). Mobile and cloud are more aligned on the business model side than I suspect most people realize.
That may not be good for individuals and businesses — you’ll have several strangers’ hands permanently in your pocket — but it could be what makes the cloud as big a business as mobile. Otherwise, I’m not sure the cloud will be meaningfully more than what it is today.

Source : vietnetworks

Read more »

Can the iPad and iPhone Rescue the Cloud?

The hype on the cloud is just as loud as the hype on mobile computing. Both appear to be gold rush destinations for vendors seeking to capitalize on all the stuff that buyers allegedly can’t get enough of. But if you look at the numbers, you see that mobile is where the money is being made, while the entire cloud market pulls in about 1 or 2 percent of what mobile does.


It seems to me that the cloud needs to be rescued, and perhaps mobile a la iPad, iPhone, and Android is the technology to do it.

[ Keep up on key mobile developments and insights via Twitter and with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter.]

The numbers overwhelmingly point to mobile’s bulging bank account
But first, let me detail the numbers. Cloud services brought in about $3 billion in 2010 from its three main components: infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and software (SaaS) offerings. In IaaS, Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) made about $500 million in 2010, and Rackspace — the No. 2 IaaS provider — raked in about $100 million. SaaS did better: Salesforce.com pulled in $1.3 billion in 2010, with the other four major SaaS providers — NetSuite, RightNow, SuccessFactors, and Taleo — earning about $200 million each. Revenues for PaaS offerings — exemplified by Salesforce.com’s Force.com and Microsoft’s Azure — aren’t broken out but are widely believed to be minuscule.

I’m not counting sales of so-called private cloud technology, as that means pretty much anything in a data center, which covers most of what IT’s expenditures ($1.5 trillion on tech last year). Whether you think a private cloud is a real cloud or just marketing buzz for the same old server, storage, and network gear (using virtualization, of course!), it’s money that IT would be spending anyhow. Even if you decide that virtualization spend should be counted as cloud spend, that adds “only” about $5 billion to the cloud total, bringing it to $8 billion.

Now to some real money: Mobile technology brought in $173 billion in 2010 from its major sources: $62 billion in 3G data plans, $99 billion in smartphone sales ($29 billion to Apple, $20 billion to Nokia, $15 billion to Research in Motion, and $9 billion to Samsung), $10 billion in tablet sales (almost all iPads last year), and $2 billion in app sales ($1.7 billion to Apple alone). Note that I’m not including iTunes and similar music, book, and video sales via mobile devices, as they can be accessed on both PCs and mobile devices. If you’re curious, they added up to $8 billion, with $4.1 billion going to Apple and $3.3 billion going to Amazon.com, including for the Kindle hardware.

How the cloud can hitch itself to the mobile bandwagon
As these numbers show, when you look at the whole mobile market, the cloud appears downright sickly as a business. Maybe mobile can help. After all, what other computing platform is more dependent on the cloud concept than mobile?

Let’s start with the obvious: storage. Although mobile devices have local storage, they’re not anywhere near as capacious as PCs — and a lot of that space is taken up by all your music. Mobile users should be helping drive the cloud storage business, to companies such as Box.net and Dropbox.

On the consumer side, Google is moving in that direction as well for its Music Beta service, and rumors are rampant that Apple plans an iCloud service that will merge its MobileMe storage/collaboration service with a new iTunes-in-the-ether service. In the not too distant future, you may have most of your data living on a personal storage cloud and a business storage cloud service for access anywhere by pretty much any computer or mobile device. Here’s an opportunity for an Amazon.com to grow its IaaS business.

Then there’s SaaS, which is where the big money (relatively speaking) is today in the cloud. With HTML5 now widely deployed, it’s time for SaaS and traditional providers alike to get cracking on really usable Web apps that auto-adjust to your mobile device of choice. Rather than sell an app once for $5 or so, developers could charge subscriptions for mobile Web apps and have that recurring revenue to keep making them better. Given that updates are free to iOS and Android apps, at some point native-app developers are going to run out of customers and, thus, income to pay for continued enhancements. Switching to SaaS could fix that — and help both developers and the cloud market.

Apple could be an ally here, as it already has a subscription model in place. Sure, it’ll charge you 30 percent, but that gives it a huge vested interest to encourage app purchases — it makes more money when developers do. There’s a reason Apple made 16 times as much money from app sales as Google did last year, despite the Android smartphone sales surge. Imagine if Apple’s revenue-sucking magic were applied to SaaS apps!

Beyond SaaS are all the other possible services that mobile users would need a cloud to access: navigation, for example. AT&T charges $10 a month for its mobile navigation service. That model could be extended to almost anything: videoconferencing — after all, you’re already paying for voice and data subscription, so why not video? — radio and TV streaming, travel information and management, and expense reporting, especially if mobile payments happen. It’s too bad Google is all about destroying competitors with free services and then selling ads to deliver to us — it could drive a lot of cloud revenue if it put together a monthly Google Mobile service that included a Yellow Pages-like facility and a collection of such services.

OK, I’m being a little facetious, but on the serious side, the whole cloud mentality is about charging people to rent resources rather than buy them once. That’s why vendors love the idea; they can make a lot more money if you keep paying for a service rather than buy — er, license software. Long ago, enterprise software vendors realized they could collect rent on the software they sold by instituting (required) maintenance plans. Now consumer software makers are getting a clue: Adobe Systems recently unveiled subscription offerings for Creative Suite that effectively double or triple the price.

That is where mobile can perhaps help the cloud the most: It’s trained people and companies to pay a monthly fee for access (your $30 or whatever a month additional cost for data access), as well as to keep an active credit or debit card for impulse shopping (such as via the iTunes Store, Kindle Store, and Android Market). Mobile and cloud are more aligned on the business model side than I suspect most people realize.
That may not be good for individuals and businesses — you’ll have several strangers’ hands permanently in your pocket — but it could be what makes the cloud as big a business as mobile. Otherwise, I’m not sure the cloud will be meaningfully more than what it is today.

Source : vietnetworks

Read more »

Special Stickers Will Bring Google Wallet To Android Phones That Lack NFC

We’re here at Google’s NFC payments announcement, where the search giant has announced a new, important product called Google Wallet (see our comprehensive post on the announcement here). Google Wallet will be launching this summer — it’s currently in field testing — allowing users to tap their phones against NFC-enabled terminals to pay for goods, redeem offers, and use their loyalty cards in a single tap.

Of course, the vast majority of phones out there do not support NFC (the Nexus S is currently the only Android phone on the market that has the technology). Google and its partners reiterated that NFC will be surging in popularity over the next couple of years, and for the time being this is really a first step. But Google also has a plan to enable older devices to use a more limited version of the app: stickers that you can put on the back of your phone.

Google’s Osama Bedier was intentionally vague about the details, but here’s what the plan seems to be: users will be able to obtain special NFC stickers with a single credit card associated with them (such stickers already exist, but these stickers will apparently be able to communicate with the Google Wallet app). It sounds like transactions made using the sticker will be relayed to the Wallet application on your Android device via the cloud. Bedier added that the experience would be limited compared to what you’d get on NFC-enabled phones, but it still sounds pretty nifty.

It’s possible this functionality will be extended to other platforms as well, as Google says it’s willing to partner with everyone to help broaden support for Google Wallet.

And, even if you don’t have the sticker, you’ll still be able to use the Wallet app to keep track of your offers, which you’ll be able to show to cashiers at participating retailers (SCVNGR and Groupon do similar things with their mobile apps).

Source :  techcrunch

Read more »

Special Stickers Will Bring Google Wallet To Android Phones That Lack NFC

We’re here at Google’s NFC payments announcement, where the search giant has announced a new, important product called Google Wallet (see our comprehensive post on the announcement here). Google Wallet will be launching this summer — it’s currently in field testing — allowing users to tap their phones against NFC-enabled terminals to pay for goods, redeem offers, and use their loyalty cards in a single tap.

Of course, the vast majority of phones out there do not support NFC (the Nexus S is currently the only Android phone on the market that has the technology). Google and its partners reiterated that NFC will be surging in popularity over the next couple of years, and for the time being this is really a first step. But Google also has a plan to enable older devices to use a more limited version of the app: stickers that you can put on the back of your phone.

Google’s Osama Bedier was intentionally vague about the details, but here’s what the plan seems to be: users will be able to obtain special NFC stickers with a single credit card associated with them (such stickers already exist, but these stickers will apparently be able to communicate with the Google Wallet app). It sounds like transactions made using the sticker will be relayed to the Wallet application on your Android device via the cloud. Bedier added that the experience would be limited compared to what you’d get on NFC-enabled phones, but it still sounds pretty nifty.

It’s possible this functionality will be extended to other platforms as well, as Google says it’s willing to partner with everyone to help broaden support for Google Wallet.

And, even if you don’t have the sticker, you’ll still be able to use the Wallet app to keep track of your offers, which you’ll be able to show to cashiers at participating retailers (SCVNGR and Groupon do similar things with their mobile apps).

Source :  techcrunch

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iPad 2 Revolutionizes Tablet Market

Apple Inc. launched the newest addition to its tech market – the iPad 2. The company, which started revolutionizing the tablet market with the launch of its iPad last April 2010, will have the launching and unveiling of iPad 2 in an event in San Francisco, California. 

Analyst Peter Misek also I anticipating these following events during the launch of iPad 2:

1. A preview of the iOS 5 is considered to be possible as the company is looking forward in continuing to push the integration across multiple devices for content, commerce and user experience.

2. A chance that Apple will also unveil new cloud-based services, which includes the revamping of Mobile Me so that it can also take in remote media storage, integration with iTunes and other features.

3. A chance that iTunes video/audio subscriptions will show themselves. However, Misek believes that this will be a difficult turn because there is the presence of content providers.

Since, Apple’s original iPad has sold 14.8 million tablets in its release; the company is expecting to sell 30 million iPad 2 units upon its release, between April 2011 and March 2012.

According to Scott Sutherland, the Wedbush Securities analyst, “The timing of the March 2 event would put the iPad on an annual cycle of updates similar to those of the iPhone and iPod media player, and keep Apple ahead of the competitors in this industry.”

Source : iphoneipadreview

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iPad 2 Revolutionizes Tablet Market

Apple Inc. launched the newest addition to its tech market – the iPad 2. The company, which started revolutionizing the tablet market with the launch of its iPad last April 2010, will have the launching and unveiling of iPad 2 in an event in San Francisco, California. 

Analyst Peter Misek also I anticipating these following events during the launch of iPad 2:

1. A preview of the iOS 5 is considered to be possible as the company is looking forward in continuing to push the integration across multiple devices for content, commerce and user experience.

2. A chance that Apple will also unveil new cloud-based services, which includes the revamping of Mobile Me so that it can also take in remote media storage, integration with iTunes and other features.

3. A chance that iTunes video/audio subscriptions will show themselves. However, Misek believes that this will be a difficult turn because there is the presence of content providers.

Since, Apple’s original iPad has sold 14.8 million tablets in its release; the company is expecting to sell 30 million iPad 2 units upon its release, between April 2011 and March 2012.

According to Scott Sutherland, the Wedbush Securities analyst, “The timing of the March 2 event would put the iPad on an annual cycle of updates similar to those of the iPhone and iPod media player, and keep Apple ahead of the competitors in this industry.”

Source : iphoneipadreview

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iPhone 4 with cash recovery scheme

May 25: The iPhone 4 — the fourth-generation variant of Apple’s smartphone — is being launched in India on Friday and will be sold through mobile service providers Aircel and Airtel.

For the first time, the mobile service providers are using an innovative hook. They are offering a reverse subsidy plan under which the buyer pays the full cost of the handset upfront and recovers the entire amount over a period of two years through monthly credits on the subscription plans.

Aircel is offering the 16GB model of the iPhone 4 at a price of Rs 34,500 and the 32GB model at Rs 40,900. “We aim to make the iPhone more affordable than ever,” said Aircel director Sandip Das.

The new model of the iPhone — which is popular for its high-speed Internet and mobile software capabilities — will be available under both post-paid and pre-paid subscription plans.

A Bharti Airtel spokesperson said the company would also offer the iPhone 4 under similar schemes and the same price range.

The reverse subsidy strategy has worked well in the West and has been responsible for the terrific sales of the product. In the three months ended March 26 this year, Apple reported worldwide iPhone sales of 18.64 million units, an increase of 113 per cent over the year-ago period.

The big advantage is that the phones will be factory-unlocked. In the West, service providers lock the phone, making it virtually impossible for the subscriber to migrate to another service provider. However, fickle consumers in India may not stand to benefit if they change service providers because they may not be able to port the reverse subsidy as well.

The iPhone 4 will also be available from Apple Authorised Premium Resellers, which are the two Imagine shops at City Centre at Salt Lake and Rajarhat.

Hot Features

The iPhone 4 is in many ways the best iPhone Apple has ever made. The biggest leap forward is the 5 megapixel camera. It has a second 640x480 front facing camera. This is not for still photos but for FaceTime video calls. The rear facing camera offers high quality stills.

The iPhone 4 is powered by a custom-built A4 processor. It has 512MB of RAM. The A4 processor brings more power while consuming less energy.

That, combined, with the iPhone’s larger battery, ensures 40 per cent more talktime than previous models.

The display is stunning because of the high-resolution screen — dubbed Retina Display. It packs four times the pixels (960x640) of previous iPhone displays into the same rectangular area.It is also a perfect companion for those with WiFi-only iPads. The Personal Hotspot feature allows your iPad to connect to the Internet through your own WiFi.

The smartphone comes with iOS 4, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system and has access to the revolutionary App Store which provides access to more than 350,000 apps.

Moneyspinner

The iPhone is the real revenue spinner in Apple’s slate of products. It accounted for $12.3 billion of sales revenue in the three months ended March this year, or 49.8 per cent of Apple’s overall sales of $24.7 billion in the period.

The iPhone 4 was launched in the US, Europe and Japan on June 24 last year at a starting price of $199. It is coming to India almost a year later.

Analysts said Apple seemed to have finally woken up to the importance of India as a potential market for its products. The technology giant has often been accused of treating India as a “dumping ground” for its phones and tablets that are at the tail end of their product cycles.

However, in April, within a little over a month of its US launch, the iPad 2 — Apple’s second-generation tablet PC — was launched in India.

One reason for bringing the iPhone 4 to India now is that several mobile service providers have started offering stress-tested 3G services that ensure high-speed data transfer capabilities.

Aircel — 74 per cent owned by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications, with India's Apollo Hospitals group owning the rest — started providing 3G services in February.

Both Bharti Airtel and Aircel have the spectrum to offer 3G services in 13 of the country’s 22 telecom service areas.

Smartphone sales in India have also soared and Apple sees it as an opportunity to bite into a growing market.

While the groundbreaking iPhone1 was never released in India, the iPhone 3G was released a month after its US launch in July 2008. However, the sales were so sluggish that mobile telephony companies such as Airtel and Vodafone were saddled with huge unsold inventories.

In a recent note, CyberMedia Research estimated sales of nearly 12 million smartphones in India during 2011 — a nearly 100 per cent growth over the previous year.

Smartphones are expected to account for 5.7 per cent of total mobile handset sales in India this year compared with 3.6 per cent last year, CyberMedia Research added.

Earnings of Indian telecom operators have been under pressure over the past few quarters due to intense competition. However, the companies are betting on higher revenue-generating services such as 3G to boost their financials.

Source : telegraphindia

Read more »

iPhone 4 with cash recovery scheme

May 25: The iPhone 4 — the fourth-generation variant of Apple’s smartphone — is being launched in India on Friday and will be sold through mobile service providers Aircel and Airtel.

For the first time, the mobile service providers are using an innovative hook. They are offering a reverse subsidy plan under which the buyer pays the full cost of the handset upfront and recovers the entire amount over a period of two years through monthly credits on the subscription plans.

Aircel is offering the 16GB model of the iPhone 4 at a price of Rs 34,500 and the 32GB model at Rs 40,900. “We aim to make the iPhone more affordable than ever,” said Aircel director Sandip Das.

The new model of the iPhone — which is popular for its high-speed Internet and mobile software capabilities — will be available under both post-paid and pre-paid subscription plans.

A Bharti Airtel spokesperson said the company would also offer the iPhone 4 under similar schemes and the same price range.

The reverse subsidy strategy has worked well in the West and has been responsible for the terrific sales of the product. In the three months ended March 26 this year, Apple reported worldwide iPhone sales of 18.64 million units, an increase of 113 per cent over the year-ago period.

The big advantage is that the phones will be factory-unlocked. In the West, service providers lock the phone, making it virtually impossible for the subscriber to migrate to another service provider. However, fickle consumers in India may not stand to benefit if they change service providers because they may not be able to port the reverse subsidy as well.

The iPhone 4 will also be available from Apple Authorised Premium Resellers, which are the two Imagine shops at City Centre at Salt Lake and Rajarhat.

Hot Features

The iPhone 4 is in many ways the best iPhone Apple has ever made. The biggest leap forward is the 5 megapixel camera. It has a second 640x480 front facing camera. This is not for still photos but for FaceTime video calls. The rear facing camera offers high quality stills.

The iPhone 4 is powered by a custom-built A4 processor. It has 512MB of RAM. The A4 processor brings more power while consuming less energy.

That, combined, with the iPhone’s larger battery, ensures 40 per cent more talktime than previous models.

The display is stunning because of the high-resolution screen — dubbed Retina Display. It packs four times the pixels (960x640) of previous iPhone displays into the same rectangular area.It is also a perfect companion for those with WiFi-only iPads. The Personal Hotspot feature allows your iPad to connect to the Internet through your own WiFi.

The smartphone comes with iOS 4, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system and has access to the revolutionary App Store which provides access to more than 350,000 apps.

Moneyspinner

The iPhone is the real revenue spinner in Apple’s slate of products. It accounted for $12.3 billion of sales revenue in the three months ended March this year, or 49.8 per cent of Apple’s overall sales of $24.7 billion in the period.

The iPhone 4 was launched in the US, Europe and Japan on June 24 last year at a starting price of $199. It is coming to India almost a year later.

Analysts said Apple seemed to have finally woken up to the importance of India as a potential market for its products. The technology giant has often been accused of treating India as a “dumping ground” for its phones and tablets that are at the tail end of their product cycles.

However, in April, within a little over a month of its US launch, the iPad 2 — Apple’s second-generation tablet PC — was launched in India.

One reason for bringing the iPhone 4 to India now is that several mobile service providers have started offering stress-tested 3G services that ensure high-speed data transfer capabilities.

Aircel — 74 per cent owned by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications, with India's Apollo Hospitals group owning the rest — started providing 3G services in February.

Both Bharti Airtel and Aircel have the spectrum to offer 3G services in 13 of the country’s 22 telecom service areas.

Smartphone sales in India have also soared and Apple sees it as an opportunity to bite into a growing market.

While the groundbreaking iPhone1 was never released in India, the iPhone 3G was released a month after its US launch in July 2008. However, the sales were so sluggish that mobile telephony companies such as Airtel and Vodafone were saddled with huge unsold inventories.

In a recent note, CyberMedia Research estimated sales of nearly 12 million smartphones in India during 2011 — a nearly 100 per cent growth over the previous year.

Smartphones are expected to account for 5.7 per cent of total mobile handset sales in India this year compared with 3.6 per cent last year, CyberMedia Research added.

Earnings of Indian telecom operators have been under pressure over the past few quarters due to intense competition. However, the companies are betting on higher revenue-generating services such as 3G to boost their financials.

Source : telegraphindia

Read more »