Category: Tech news

Samsung really wants you to use NFC. They launched these TecTile NFC tags alongside the Galaxy S III, and they’re already updating the app in Google Play to be compatible with the new Holiday flagship, Galaxy Note II.

But it’s more difficult to explain than tap to share. Tap, share, done. It’s easy. That’s why Tap to Share is all over Samsung’s new commercials.

TecTiles, to the novice smartphone user, mean nothing. But they can actually do more useful things than tap to share. And they don’t depend on a world full of Galaxy S III owners. Essentially, TecTiles are little tags that automate your phone when you tap it against the tag.

So, let’s say you want the ringer on loud and WiFi when you’re at home, but want your WiFi off, Bluetooth on, and ringer on silent when you’re at work. You can program a tag for your desk and a tag for your home coffee table that changes those settings for you instantly. Even better, you can set certain profiles for each tag so that various users can have different actions associated with the same tag.

It sounds complicated, but the app makes it really simple.

Retailers can do the same thing by placing a TecTile on a door or bulletin board, allowing users to download content, check in on foursquare or Facebook, or send a tweet.

The launch of version 3.0, with the ability to save TecTile programs, create private ones, and program multiple actions to a TecTile, should only make the tags that much more useful.

But Samsung’s NFC is much bigger than these two phones, and it’s much bigger than TecTiles or any other tap-to-share feature. You’ve seen the commercials, where two Galaxy S III owners tap their phones to share a playlist, becoming the envy of every Nancy and Sally in line for the iPhone 5.

The only problem is that no one actually does that. I can’t find many trustworthy usage statistics on NFC (which isn’t a good sign), but even if I ask around to my geeky tech friends the answer is the same. And it’s on a lot of phones. On Samsung alone, you have almost a dozen smartphones with NFC capabilities. And these are popular phones: the Galaxy S II, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Nexus, the Galaxy Note, and the list goes on.

It’s a bit like contactless credit cards. If you haven’t ever used one, do me a favor. The next time you go to a drug store, or grocery store, or anywhere where they let you swipe your own card through the machine, simply tap your card against that little Wifi type signal. MasterCard and Visa have a wide net cast, you probably just don’t know you’re in it.

The same is true for NFC. Samsung, at the very least, is on a mission to get you using the technology, in whatever way possible. TecTiles don’t come at a cheap price but this isn’t a high volume type of purchase. You buy one set for $15 and use all five for actions you perform every day.

The update to TecTiles 3.0 is available now in Google Play.

Click to view slideshow.

NextWorth, one of many websites that specialize in giving upgrade-hungry consumers a check for their used gadgets, said today that it experienced an over 1,000 percent increase in the volume of trade-ins across all iPad devices in the wake of Tuesday’s Apple event. The bottom line is that people look to be interested in getting the latest hardware, and are divesting themselves of older models to make that happen.

Of the new trade-in volume since Tuesday, the latest, third-generation iPad accounted for 66 percent, while the iPad 2 was responsible for 28 percent of newly swapped devices, and the original iPad came in at just 6 percent. It’s interesting that the iPad 3 is leading the pack: this means a good chunk of people who just bought a new iPad last spring or sometime since are interested in getting a newer version.

Whether those buyers are looking for the iPad mini, or the beefed up fourth-generation iPad is hard to tell from these numbers alone, but we’ll see how initial sales progress during the holiday quarter to find out. I have to say, I’m tempted to swap out my third-generation iPad for the new Lightning-capable hotness myself, if only just to minimize my cable clutter. Anyone else making the switch?

Google just announced that it is taking the Trekker, its backpack-sized Street View camera system into the Grand Canyon to map the National Park’s hiking trails. Instead of having to huff and puff your way up Bright Angel Trail in person, you will soon be able take a virtual stroll down to the Colorado River. According to Google, this is the Trekker’s first “official outing.”

The company first showed the backpack camera system at its Google Maps 3D event earlier this year. While the first Street View camera systems needed vans full of equipment, Google noted at the time, the whole system now fits into a (heavy) backpack. Besides Google’s iconic Street View cars, the company also recent introduced trikes and snowmobiles for gathering imagery in parks, on college campuses and Antarctica. Earlier this year, Google also put a Street View camera on a train in Switzerland.

Google didn’t announce when these new images from the Grand Canyon will appear on Google Maps. The Grand Canyon, however, is the perfect place to take the Trekker on its first official imagery collection. “The canyon landscape is one of the most breathtaking places in the world, is only accessible on foot, and perfectly demonstrates why the Street View Trekker backpack was developed to maneuver narrow trails and rocky terrain,” a Google spokesperson told us.

It was just over a week ago that Tweetie creator and former Twitter employee Loren Brichter unveiled atebits 2.0, the rebirth of his independent software development company, and announced that its first fruit would be a game. Now, that game has arrive, and it’s called Letterpress, and it looks glorious.

It’s a word game with an appealing, minimalist visual design that’s designed for Game Center multiplayer, and it’s free and a universal app that works on both iPhone and iPad. There’s an in-app purchase for $0.99 that unlock additional features. It looks really good, and could be the next Words with Friends or Draw Something, though hopefully not fated for a disastrous Zynga acquisition.

Brichter has a storied history with acquisitions  too. Tweetie was a gem of an app, and for a little while at least after Twitter bought the original atebits, it made Twitter’s native apps on both iOS and Mac category-leading once atebits was acquired by the social network. But those early gains turned sour, as Twitter seemed to want to move things back to the web on the desktop, and just basically messed with their mobile offerings. Brichter departed Twitter in November 2011, and since then Twitter’s native software offerings have gone decidedly downhill.

Letterpress is just the first taste from Brichter, and there’s more yet to come, which is a very good thing for users and anyone who enjoys watching creativity at work.

Skype hit version 6 today, with a rare simultaneous release for both Windows and Mac. This brings a whole bunch of new features to the table, including single sign-on with both Facebook and Microsoft credentials, so that new users don’t even have to sign up for Skype itself, Retina display compatibility for Macs, and multi-window chats, so that you can have conversations going in multiple windows at the same time.

On the Mac side, Skype has been slowly building back up from a significant redesign that struck a lot of users the wrong way, adding a lot of clutter and unnecessary screen real estate occupancy to what was once a very simple app. It’s been getting a lot better, and this update really steps up the game for owners of Apple’s 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, or those hoping to buy the new 13-inch version.

Also new to the Skype desktop app is the ability to chat with Live Messenger, Hotmail and Outlook contacts via Skype  just like you’ve been able to do with Facebook contacts for a while now. Eventually, Microsoft will roll out voice and video calls for Microsoft network contacts as well, something it says will arrive “in coming weeks.”

Generally, I’m wary when a big company buys a smaller one with a cool product, but so far, Microsoft has actually been very kind to Skype’s product, and made a number of considerable improvements. Let’s hope Redmond keeps at it.

Google announced today that marketers and advertisers promoting iOS applications can now monitor conversions – meaning app downloads – using Google’s AdWords. The news follows Google’s earlier move this April to offer a similar tracking option for Android applications.

With the added support for the iOS platform, businesses can track downloads of their Android or iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch applications from their AdWords campaigns as an AdWords conversion. Simply put, it means that when a user downloads a mobile app from either Google Play or the iTunes App Store after first clicking on an ad, that download can now be tracked.

However, there is a caveat: Google says that for iOS applications, it’s only able to track downloads driven by ads served within mobile apps – it can’t track iOS app downloads that originate from ad on Google Search or its Google Display network. That limits the level of insight Google can provide into the Apple ecosystem, but at least it’s a step in the right direction in terms of understanding which campaigns are most effective.

In order to implement iOS app download tracking, app marketers will have to set up a new conversion in their AdWords account, download and integrate an SDK into their mobile app, then paste a small line of code into the app to call the SDK. The code snippet is found in the same section of their AdWords account where publishers previously set up their Android app downloads. It’s a few more steps to get going – Android app marketers have been able to track their apps codelessly, Google notes, just by setting up a new conversion in their account.

Note that downloads can only be tracked when the ad points directly to the App Store (third-party URLs are not supported). Google is hosting a webinar here on YouTube which will have more on this topic.

The [US government? Federal government?] government has released new guidelines on facial recognition technologies and discretely tucked in a Trojan horse that is destined to have fierce opposition: a rule that advertisers and social networks must get permission before repurposing facial data for future use. Facebook has long argued that “opt-in” rules would stifle innovation in a culture with unpredictable tolerance for new uses of personal data, such as the newsfeed, which users initially opposed and has since become a staple of social networking. The Federal Trade Commission worries that Facial data can be automatically be collected in en masse and repurposed for intrusive advertising, when technologies such as interactive billboards become more common.

Indeed, third-party developers are already starting to engineer creative Face-sensitive products, such as Facedeals, a camera that automatically “checks-in” users as they walk into a restaurant.

In recognition of the growing use of Facial data, the report laid out scenarios. For example, the FTC notes, businesses that allow users to virtually “try on” clothes should delete body and facial data once the user closes his account and should not sell the information to other advertisers to use in ways materially different than the original shopping experience.

The FTC further conjures up scenarios where social networks can be abused:

“Consider the example of a mobile app that allows users to identify strangers in public places, such as on the street or in a bar. If such an app were to exist, a stranger could surreptitiously use the camera on his mobile phone to take a photo of an individual who is walking to work or meeting a friend for a drink and learn that individual’s identity – and possibly more information, such as her address – without the individual even being aware that her photo was taken.”

For all these (potentially) frightening reasons, “social networks should obtain a consumer’s affirmative express consent before using a consumer’s image or any biometric data derived from that image in a materially different manner than it represented when it collected the data,” explains the report [emphasis added].

In refuting previous FTC guidelines, Facebook has warned that innovation requires repurposing personal data, especially when they have developed a trusted relationship with the user. “Where a user has an existing relationship with a business and the change will benefit the user through new or innovative service offerings, opt-in consent should not be required,” Facebook wrote.

The report has its critics. In dissent, Commissioner J . Thomas Rosch wrote, “I disagree with the adoption of ‘best practices’ on the ground that facial recognition may be misused. There is nothing to establish that this misconduct has occurred or even that it is likely to occur in the near future.”

While the report is specific to facial recognition, it’s strong wording on “express consent” could have far-reaching implications depending on it’s interpretation.

Powervoice, the social media marketing company founded by former IBM consultant Ryan Landau and his ex-Googler brother Andrew, has pivoted. Hard. And the founders have left the company. Originally, the service was operating as a place where users were paid to share brands’ messages on social networks, in a manner similar to Adly but open to all – not just celebrities and other influentials.

Not too surprisingly, that plan did not work out. “What we discovered very quickly is that incentivized a lot of inauthentic behavior, and that inauthentic behavior wasn’t really valuable to anyone. It wasn’t valuable to the brands being shared, and it wasn’t valuable to the people that were getting that information shared to them,” explains new Powervoice CEO Dan Blue, formerly of Mobile Accord.

Today, the company is opening up shop with a new focus, which could be described as a social network centered around brands. It’s a place where people can share their thoughts, photos, links and other content about their favorite – or least favorite – companies. But wait, don’t we already have Facebook for that?

Blue emphasized the fact that on Facebook, the conversation about a brand is controlled by the brand itself. The company maintains its Facebook Page, making sure the conversation stays directed and on topic. That also often means that complaints are taken down, even when legitimate. So I asked Blue, doesn’t this mean that Powervoice could become home to all those brand complaints, as opposed to people saying nice things?

“We think we’re going to have both, but we also don’t necessarily shy away from that because we want to have an accurate representation of that brand,” he says. “I don’t necessarily think that negative versus positive is the distinction that’s important, it will be good content versus bad content.”

Even if the startup wants to become the new, de facto spot for sharing thoughts, feedback and complaints about brands on the web, it will have a tough time breaking consumers’ old habits: namely, Facebooking, tweeting or blogging about these things. What’s the user’s incentive to change their behavior, now that monetary rewards are gone? Powervoice doesn’t really offer one, besides the experience it offers and the “quality of conversation” it provides, according to Blue. Hmm.

In the future, the company has plans to take the service mobile, which would allow users to post their feedback about local retailers – a move that sounds decidedly more interesting, even though it also means going up against local ratings and reviews giants like Yelp, Google+ Local or even Foursquare, for example. At least with Powervoice’s reviews, there could be features like search across discussion topics, in-store photos, product recommendations, and more.

As it stands today, however, Powervoice has a tough climb ahead. Some things I don’t care for about the new version: Powervoice ripped off Pinterest’s user interface, it auto-posts your follows and comments to Facebook (you can turn those off the in the settings), and it lists your “friends” on the sidebar, making the service seem more social than it really is. When you click on your friend’s profile, you’ll discover that these are just empty placeholders for their forthcoming account. No, no, no.

Powervoice has over 500 brands on the site currently, and has transitioned over some of its earlier user base, but Blue declined to provide numbers on users, actives, or other engagement metrics of the previous version, and the revamped Powervoice has only just now launched, making it too soon to offer new numbers.

As for the decision to bring in new management, the company is characterizing it as a “mutual decision” of the board and the founders themselves. The company still has the same angel investors involved as before (David Farbman of Outdoor Hub, and Aaron Weitzman and David Weinberg of Cactus Media), as well an undisclosed round of seed funding. Trevor Fitzgerald and Jim Filbert join Blue to round out the team.

If you told me yesterday that today there would be a robot that balances on a single ball and can locomote itself around the room on said ball, I’d say you were a crazy person. Well, you’re not a crazy person. Bossa Nova Robotics, makers of the Penbo line of robotic toys, has just launched the mObi [sic], a robot that “is based on technology that allows the robot to balance on a ball and move seamlessly with a single point of contact on the ground, enabling natural omni-directional movement, slender design profiles and superior navigation in human environments.”

The robot, shown here, balances on a single ball. Bossa Nova worked with engineers at Carnegie Mellon University to get this girl rolling and apparently it will be available as a research platform first and then as an actual product in around 2013.

We’re trying to get a bit more information, but until then just imagine how fun it would be to treat this robot like a self-righting punching bag clown and then, when it got angry enough, it would lash out with razor-sharp claws.

Shine Security has raised $3.3 million for its next-generation anti-virus technology. The round was led by Horizon Ventures with further participation from Initial Capital.

Shine addresses advanced persistent threats  that we increasingly see.  In broad strokes, Shine detects when your mobile device or PC shows just the slightest abnormality. It is designed to detect attacks that are on par with Stuxnet.

Founder and CEO Ron Porat said in an interview yesterday that the technology is designed to make the operating system unbreakable. Shine will initially work on Android devices with operating systems, including iOS, to follow.

Mobile security will become one of the most important problems for CIOs  to solve, especially with the jump in attacks, and complexity in detecting them. There are a host of companies addressing ways to combat attacks.  For instance, in July, Seculert raised $5.35 million round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners for the Israeli company’s next generation advanced threat detection service.

In my view, Shine’s biggest challenge is the iOS platform.  It is the most widely used platform and security is at the core of the technology. Roi Carthy of Initial Capital would not say when Shine will be available on iOS.

Wall Street is responding with enthusiasm to Facebook’s earnings. Shares (NASDAQ:FB) are currently trading 22 percent above yesterday’s price. During the earnings call, the company announced that 14 percent of ad revenue are now coming from mobile ads. It is both a meaningful part of Facebook’s revenue and a shift investors were waiting for.

Pre-market went as high as 24.12. Yet, trading at 23.83 a share is still much below the $38 IPO level. It’s a two-month high and an optimistic indicator based on numbers — and numbers don’t lie. Facebook’s market capitalization gained around 10 billion dollars overnight.

The first quarterly earnings are very important for a public company. It all comes down to listening to investors, inspiring confidence and showing signs of growth. Facebook’s revenue is growing and following a good trend.

But with one billion users, the ability to monetize those eyeballs is the question on everyone’s lips. In particular, the company has to transform itself to become a mobile first company. Usage numbers are soaring on mobile platforms and the company is dedicated to take advantage of that.

Lock-up expirations are coming up soon as well. On November 14, 777 million shares will become available for trading. It could go either way for the stock price.

Corning’s Gorilla Glass got famous for being the tough, scratch-resistant front screen covering material on Apple’s original iPhone. Then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs talked Corning CEO Wendell Weeks into producing production quantities of the stuff, the legend goes, and now, it’s been featured on over 1 billion devices worldwide, the company announced in its quarterly earnings release.

Gorilla Glass is in larger part responsible for Apple’s feat of dazzling the world with a touchscreen phone that could even survive a tango in your pocket with a set of keys, and still come out looking like a champ. And now it’s virtually everywhere: Acer, Asus Nokia, Dell, HP, HTC, LG, Lenovo, Sony, all use it, and the list goes on.

So what’s that done for Corning’s overall fortunes? Well, in 2011, it neared $700 million in sales, and in Q3 sales alone for 2012 Gorilla Glass totalled $363 million, up 21 percent year over year.

But it’s not all roses, overall sales were up 7 percent from Q2 to $2.04 billion, but down 2 percent year over year, and the company may cut jobs in an effort to reduce costs thanks to weaknesses in its telecommunications and environmental tech divisions.

Gorilla Glass is clearly a key revenue driver for Corning going forward, and it also discussed its upcoming Willow Glass product in the release, which is an “ultra-slim flexible glass” designed to change what’s possible in creating consumer electronic devices. As Corning previous showed off in a video, Willow glass could dramatically improve LCD and OLED panel production, as well as drastically change the shape of future smartphone designs, since it makes curved glass surfaces much easier, and eventually, more affordable to produce.

Decide.com, the shopping search engine that tells consumers both what and when to buy, is introducing its premium level of service today. Starting now, Decide.com will begin to charge for its “when to buy” recommendations – the recommendations which serve as Decide.com’s distinguishing feature versus the other shopping search services on the market currently.

The “when to buy” recommendations and Decide’s price guarantees (a money-back offer which will pay you if the price drops when Decide predicted otherwise) will now be $4.99/month or $29.99/year.

Built by former Farecast engineers, Decide uses similar technology to track price shifts for products as Farecast did to track airline ticket prices prior to its Microsoft acquisition. Using proprietary algorithms, Decide analyzes the fluctuations in price for the products it indexes, also taking into account things like historical product release cycles, news reports, company announcements, and more. Put simply, it’s the engine that could have told you to wait before buying a new iPad last week, as it would have known that Apple was likely to announce a new model yesterday.

The company advised users of the coming change via blog post a few weeks ago, and CEO Mike Fridgen explains that moving to premium pricing will help Decide keep its recommendations unbiased and objective, as it won’t need to rely on advertisers to generate revenue.

Going forward, the “what to buy” recommendations will remain free as will the price alerting feature, he adds.

To date, Decide has provided over 10 million users with “when to buy” recommendations since its launch in June 2011, which it calculates to be $127 million in potential savings. Although it started with a focus on gadgets, it now offers over a dozen product categories, including home appliances, sports equipment, home and garden, other electronics, and more. The service is now seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors per month and growing, and gets over 1 million pageviews per month.

Below, a screenshot of how Decide will present the upgrade option to users, starting today:

Price was perhaps always the most anticipated feature of the iPad mini, and now it’s proving the most controversial. My Twitter stream has been filled with arguments back and forth on the iPad mini’s $329 price tag, with many weighing in saying it’s too expensive and that Apple missed the mark.

It’s a funny discussion in a lot of ways, because it’s one that people often have around Apple products, especially at the introduction of a brand new line or device. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the following headlines from 2010, shortly following the original iPad’s introduction.

• John Squires: iPad Is Big And Beautiful But It’s Too Expensive
• Could Apple’s iPad Be Too Expensive For Brits?
• Apple iPad Price Still a Concern
• Analysts Suggest iPad Might Be Too Expensive For Holiday Gift

And, maybe my favorite given all that’s happened since:

• Dell: iPad is Too Expensive, Will Fail in the Enterprise

So while a lot of similar headlines are popping up this time around, we now have the benefit of hindsight to add some clarity to the discussion. There’s also a fair number of logical reasons Apple has priced this tablet correctly, history lessons notwithstanding.

1. Brand cachet

Apple operates as, and is perceived as a premium brand. With some of their recent pricing accomplishments, including the MacBook Air starting at $999 and the iMac now beginning at $1299, it’s easy to see why people might think Apple is playing along with the rest of the market’s race to lower prices. But that’s not how Apple competes, and that’s not how it ships product.

Much of the value in Apple lies in its brand cachet, something which is especially powerful in emerging Asian markets, but also still very effective in established regions like North America. Apple is seen as a maker of premium goods, and they emphasized that amply with this iPad, bringing back a lot of the same rhetoric they used to portray the iPhone 5 as a precision instrument, on par with the finest mechanical watches.

2. Measured by quality

Apple’s identity as a luxury brand clearly has a strong marketing component, but it also arises naturally from making great products. The iPad mini is meant to compete on quality with others out there in the smaller tablet space, not price, just like the Mac does in the notebook and desktop market (where its growth outpaces the rest of the industry, by the way).

Almost all of Apple’s marketing around this device focuses on its ability to exceed the competition in terms of usability, design and quality of experience. That’s also how it has traditionally marketed the Mac. With the original iPad, it had a leg up in that it was forging a new market, but it’s coming late to the small tablet space. Still, by competing on its own terms, and delivering a product that definitely does feel more polished than other options out there, it’s saying the extra $129 you’ll pay versus others is money well spent.

And Apple’s right on that score. As I mentioned in a Branch discussion on the subject, the iPad displays approximately 49 percent more content when viewing web pages horizontally than the Nexus 7, according to Apple SVP Phil Schiller, and at $329 it’s around 49 percent more expensive than the Nexus 7

3. Apple is a hardware company

Apple sells hardware, and that’s its main concern. Amazon and Google are not hardware companies, and don’t pretend to be. They sell devices because it furthers their own primary agendas (e-commerce for Amazon, search and ad revenue for Google) and can accordingly do so at a loss.

For Apple to market a device it must be profitable. And not just profitable, but within their acceptable range of what defines profitability, which means significant gross margins made on every device. Otherwise, it’s not worth Apple’s time to make that product, and it won’t be made.

The iPad mini is priced where Apple can price it while still creating a quality product that doesn’t feel like a crippled device, while still satisfying their profitability requirements. If it was a 7-inch tablet with a single camera and a much thicker design, I’d say it was overpriced, but as it is, if you look at what it can do, it’s more than competitive and meets Apple’s business requirements for bringing a new product to market.

Those claiming this iPad is too expensive are either forgetting the past or forgetting what kind of company Apple is, but I don’t think consumers will be among that crowd. But you don’t have to take my word for it: pre-orders start Friday, and we’ll probably learn soon after just how much appetite there is out there for Apple’s latest innovation.

Nintendo has stemmed operating loss slightly in the April-September quarter, the total falling from $718 million to $366 million. Console sales fell about 60 percent with DS sales of 970,000 and Wii sales hitting 1.32 million.

The 3DS rose nearly 65%, however, with sales of 5 million units, including 2.1 million 3DS XLs.

Nintendo noted that a number of titles, including New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Mario Kart 7, buoyed 3DS revenue considerably. Nintendo and its partners sold 19.03 million games for the 3DS, which suggests a great deal of interest and support in the platform.

You can read the complete earnings report here. The stock closed at 16.14 today.