Category: Tech news

The Lumia 800 is the first lovechild birthed from the union of Microsoft and Nokia. The two companies entered into a happy alliance in February 2011, with Nokia saying it would ship the bulk of its forthcoming handsets loaded with the Windows Phone mobile operating system.

So it’s no surprise that Nokia’s Lumia 800 runs Microsoft’s new Windows Phone Mango OS with aplomb. But the device lacks a few comforts you’ve come to expect from a smartphone in 2011. For one, there’s no front-facing camera for video chatting. The screen is a little smaller as well, only 3.7-inches.

Oh, and another thing — you can’t buy it yet in the United States. The full Nokia Windows Phone lineup won’t be available outside Europe until early 2012.

More on that later. First, the hardware.

Aside from the smaller screen and a few other points, the Lumia is nearly identical to the Meego-powered Nokia N9 we saw last month. It shares the N9’s flattened cylindrical polycarbonate shell and 8-megapixel f/2.2 rear-facing, Carl Zeiss-fitted camera.

I’m a huge fan of the slim, minimalist industrial design. It fits nicely in the hand and even nicer in the pocket, with no additional doodads, rubberized backings or textured plastic to detract from the smoothness. It’s almost Jobsian in that way. On the bottom of the device is a discreet speaker grill. On the top, my only design quibble: Next to the headphone jack, the microUSB port is hidden beneath a push-to-open plastic slot that’s just begging to get ripped off like a hangnail. When the slot lid is shut, though, it leaves the 800 nearly hole-less.

The Lumia’s screen is a little smaller than the smartphone standard, but the 480×800 resolution, 3.7-inch AMOLED display is impressive nonetheless. Colors are very bright and lines are sharp. Pixels seem to float on the surface of the screen rather than muted beneath a layer of glass. White pixels or light-colored pixels, though, are unfortunately visible individually to the human eye. This is a con for me when compared to something like Apple’s Retina Display, where it’s very difficult to make out the pixels no matter the color.

The 8-megapixel camera is wonderful in most settings, but I found it ill-suited for flash photography. I left the flash on auto, and the phone often fired the flash when there really wasn’t a need, resulting in overly harsh photos with dark backgrounds. The lesson here is simple: Don’t use the flash. But most people leave the flash on and use it more often than you or I do. Their pictures will suffer. There’s an Auto-Fix software tweak for photos that mitigates that harshness (among other things), and like other smartphones on the market, the Lumia has a number of camera settings you can adjust to better suit your environment. 720p HD video recording is generally pretty good, with audio recorded in stereo.

App-wise, Microsoft is working on filling its Windows Phone Marketplace with high-quality, desirable applications, and it’s coming along. Choices are still rather slim, but the staples are there. Besides Facebook and Twitter (which are actually tightly integrated into the phone’s OS), you’ve got Netflix, Google Search and YouTube, streaming services like Rdio and Spotify, and games like Burn the Rope, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Plants vs. Zombies. Though it’s surely not meant to be a check in the “pro” column, app discovery is easier since search results are narrower.

Inside, the Lumia 800 has a battery-sipping 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor. This is a step up from most handsets on the market, and it makes Live Tile updates, button taps, and typing on the onscreen keyboard crisp and appropriately responsive. There’s only 512 MB of RAM, but both apps and script-heavy websites like Gmail load swiftly. Mango’s multi-tasking functionality makes swapping between various apps a snap, and even with extensive app switching, the minimal RAM doesn’t seem to be an issue. There’s also a flat 16 GB of on-board storage with no option to expand that via microSD, something we’ve come to expect on competing Android handsets these days.

So it’s a solid phone, and an exemplar of how Windows Phone OS is supposed to look and act. Unfortunately, the Lumia 800 may be a “too little, too late” player in the fast-paced smartphone game — the phone hasn’t actually landed stateside yet. It’s currently only available across the pond. The handset should arrive in the U.S., reportedly as an LTE model, at some point in 2012.

But seeing as this is a decidedly 2011 phone, it will seem obsolete when the calendar turns and the new wave of 2012 smartphones arrives. In the meantime, many could end up shunning this belated Windows Phone offering for a 4G Android phone or the iPhone 4S.

Nokia and Microsoft are going to have to drop that premium price point down a few notches if they hope to entice new buyers and early adopters. It’s a solid phone, but we need to see a US version now.

WIRED The best Windows Phone we’ve seen yet. The AMOLED display really pops, and onscreen interactions are snappy and smoothly executed.

TIRED No front-facing camera, and the 8 MP rear-facing camera is subpar compared to peers like the Samsung Galaxy S II and iPhone 4S. Not actually available in the U.S. yet.

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Whereas Flipboard populates your screen with stories from news sources and social networks you specify, Zite relies solely on your selected topics of interest — world news, science, tech — then displays relevant articles. Tap a thumbs-up or thumbs-down button on individual items and the app will learn your preferences.

WIRED Analyzes Twitter feeds and Google Reader for quick personalization.

TIRED Look is more neighborhood newsletter than glossy monthly. No way to block specific sources.

Nothing fancy here, just straightforward access to great journalism. Smartphone users get a neat list of clickable headlines; the iPad version presents a more newspaper-like layout with photos and several article previews per page. The free app offers a dozen top news stories each day, but to see all articles you need a subscription.

NYTimes

WIRED Can automatically cache items for offline reading.

TIRED Even subscribers face occasional full-screen pop-up ads.

Though CNN on a smartphone doesn’t look much different from any other news organization, its iPad app is singular, delivering three powerful ways to browse the day’s stories: View items as an image grid, a list of large-text headlines, or a full-screen photo slide show. The vivid multimedia enhancements and bold color scheme feel like an advanced control panel for news rather than a typical newspaper or website. The curation tends toward the sensational, and the reporting doesn’t match the depth of more venerable sources like The New York Times or the BBC. But in terms of visual presentation and navigation, CNN is without peer.

WIRED One-touch access to CNN’s live TV feed. Save stories for offline reading. Pulls up local news on GPS-enabled phones. Hourly audio updates from CNN Radio.

TIRED Crash-prone. Image-heavy interface can be cluttered and slow. Subscription to supported cable or satellite TV service required to access live feed.

Turn your device into a full-blown stock-market command center, with real-time quotes from Nasdaq and the NYSE, historical charts, and commodities and currency pricing. CNBC packs data into every available pixel, but you can keep tabs on favorite stocks with customizable watch lists.

CNBC Real-Time

WIRED Trend charts go back five years. Stream CNBC shows like Mad Money With Jim Cramer. Omnipresent ticker in tablet version.

TIRED Distracting banner ads. Kind of cluttered.

If your idea of checking the weather is looking out the window, this is your app. Instead of dinky icons and dew-point readings, Weather HD presents a full-screen animation overlaid with basic data like temperature and chance of rain. On a hot, clear day, you might see a smoldering sun or windmills spinning under a blue sky; for a thunderstorm, a clip of lightning bolts and thunderheads.

WIRED Fun to look at for its own sake.

TIRED Repetitive weather means repetitive animations.

Lift tickets are too expensive to justify a day on shallow bases and icy groomers. Create a list of ski resorts and get daily updates on base depths, new accumulations, and surface conditions. The main view offers a quick look at the basic data; tap on one to get full details.

Ski & Snow Report

WIRED Comments and photos from skiers on the slopes. Powder alerts when your favorite mountains are getting dumped on.

TIRED Trail maps and ticket prices would be welcome. Provides photos only for select spots.

Getting busted every time you check your phone under the dinner table for the latest scores? This efficient app may help. Pick your favorite leagues to get all the results in a quick, easy-to-read list. If you can spare a few more glances, tap a game for stats and summaries.

Yahoo! Sportacular

WIRED The big-three US ball sports, plus international options. Android widgets for favorite teams.

TIRED Lacks some geekier stats like the series count for playoffs. No news or league standings on iPad.

Banish that guilt-inducing stack of New Yorkers on your bedside table with one of the best-executed magazine apps out there. Your tower of back issues is now a tidy gallery of thumbnail covers, and with slightly wider columns and shorter pages, the digital version is less intimidating than its print counterpart. Aesthetically, the app stays true to The New Yorker’s no-frills layout, signature typefaces, and scattered cartoon surrealism, but there are occasional photo slide shows and bits of audio commentary. Print subscribers get full access, with weekly notifications when the next issue is ready to download. But it’s still up to you to read it all.

WIRED Elegant thumbnail navigation for jumping between stories. Full-screen view for cartoons. In-app utility for entering the weekly caption contest.

TIRED Process for linking online account to print subscription — required for full digital access — is a bit muddled.

If you’ve already seen this, watch it again. Here’s veteran comedian and Mrs. Doubtfire star Robin Williams on the Ellen Show talking about “the new future” and bringing up the technology du jour, Siri. I mean just the fact that this is happening is absurd, but then, then …

Commenter Peter Kjeldsen puts it best:

“You have the normal Robin being gentle and ordinary fun.. then he goes in to french Siri mode, gets a laugh and that is when this man starts rolling.. there is no off switch when he does that… LOOK LOOK AND THEN PAINT.”

My favorite part is “Why are you looking at a phone? LIVE YOUR LIFE …”

Priceless advice.

Via Vic Gundotra

Funzio has managed to make hit versions of its first game, Crime City, for both Facebook and iOS devices. That’s a rare feat for any company, especially such a small one. Now it’s trying again with a role-playing simulation called Modern War, that it’s launching first on iOS.

The game itself is closely patterned after the iOS version of Crime City. A slick graphical interface lets you move around various battle scenarios, where you click on enemy units and structures on the screen to attack them, and earn virtual cash and experience when you win. You also battle with various other players in a traditional role-playing format where you don’t actually do any battling, you just see the resulting losses and point gains. A home base lets you build structures that generate new troops and equipment.

The free game has the standard virtual goods revenue model. The virtual cash currency and gold are dual currencies that let you do things like buy new buildings that provide more powerful improvements to your troops.

Modern Wars improvements, from the quick look we got earlier today, go beyond just being a reskin of iOS Crime City. Additions include attacking options like aerial and naval bombardments, as well as more customization options for the buildings in your base. The graphics are also sharp, and designed to appeal to more traditional gamers.

The larger story here is Funzio’s strategy for going after both iOS and Facebook markets. Crime City launched on Facebook in September of last year, and had a big run — although it has matured and is falling towards the last part of its life cycle now. The iOS version launched this past August, and has been among the top 25 free as well as top grossing titles for most of its time since then.

By launching Modern War on iOS now, Funzio could piggybacking off of the current enthusiasm for the iOS version of the street-themed first title. The Facebook version is coming later, vice president of business development Jamil Moledina tells me, once the Facebook development team finishes working on the company’s third game. (Social-mobile features are fairly limited so far, although you can do things like share the game with Facebook friends.)

Large Facebook developers like Zynga have been slowly but steadily figuring out how to build mobile games. Mobile gaming startups have for the most part not been able to — or have decided not to — go after Facebook. Funzio is, along with Booyah and a few others, an exception. However, the focus on both platforms has been an increasingly common theme in game development in the last year, as the mobile virtual goods model has come into its own.

And its track record so far isn’t the only reason this company and its new title are worth keeping an eye on. Funzio is comprised of all stars from other top other social and mobile game developers. Cofounder and COO Anil Dharni was previously a cofounder at top mobile game developer Storm8. Cofounder and CEO Kenneth Chiu was a general manager at Zynga. Moledina was just recruited away from a senior business position at EA. Chairman and founder Rick Thompson had the same role at Playdom.

Modern War isn’t quite live yet, but you can keep track of it here.

If you are lucky enough to own one of the Jawbone UP bracelets that doesn’t have issues, then you’re probably pretty psyched at the potential the simple and streamlined life-tracking device holds. You know what else is psyching me up right now? The prettiness of Path’s re-launch and expansion into a slicker, more agile life timeline, a way to curate the overwhelming amount of content you produce as a digital citizen.

Path has two key features that indicate where social sharing is heading. The first is sleep mode. While some might not “get” why people would want to share their sleep patterns with their friends, Dave Morin (and UP creator Hosain Rahman) do; “It used to be that people would be online or off. Nowadays with mobile, it’s more like asleep or awake,” Morin told me yesterday.

Exactly.

I love my UP wristband in just its own little app silo, but last night when I clicked it before I fell asleep, I wished that my sleep info would sync to Path so hard it hurt. Same goes for waking up.

Both Path and UP devices play into natural human laziness: UP uses its accelerometer to automatically track and graph the number of steps you take a day, Path uses the iPhone’s GPS to automatically update your timeline with “Arrived @ Location” anytime you travel a distance that could be traveled by plane.

Mind you, the sharing of this kind of extremely personal information like sleeping, eating and exercising (and trusting “smart” updating) is only possible when you’re sharing with a limited amount of people. The difference between a being “journal that writes itself” and an invader of user privacy is 50 versus 500 friends.

Path also has the beginner’s advantage of being new to the market; You’re more likely to want to share with a social graph you JUST picked, versus the one you started building on Facebook four years ago.

I have little idea how I’m supposed to set up a “Team” on UP (yeah, I know you can manually search for people but somehow remembering people’s names has gone the way of remembering people’s phone numbers in the age of the instant Friends List). If only there was a mobile-based social network built specifically for private sharing …

Think about Facebook versus Path like email versus texting, email is great if you’re on the web with a wide variety of people whereas texting is suited to mobile devices and few contacts. In the age of the almighty Facebook, micro-networks like Path can and will survive because of smartphone OS evolution and hardware advancements like UP, the Withing scale or Nike+.

The UP bracelet progresses mobile life-tracking . And Path mobile life-sharing. Both have some kinks that need to be worked out (the food tracker on UP absolutely needs to be supplemented by something like this crazy app that comes up with calorie counts of photographed meals using Mechanical Turk).

But it is early early days.

Folks who use iOS devices can enjoy the fine, fresh flavor of Reddit any time day or night with the official Reddit app. But what about Android users? What are they, chopped bacon?

BaconReader is a new Android reader produced by OneLouder. It is, as you’d expect, heavily text-based but it allows you to view your own account and submit news to Reddit as well as browse image links like a champ.

Why Conde Nast doesn’t have their own iReddit version for Android is beyond me, but there you have it. The free version includes ads but you can upgrade to ad-free for $1.99. Most important is this simple line that many wouldn’t notice in the product description and that I think shows the care and diligence these folks put into the app.

– Rageface and look of disapproval support

There are plenty of Android Reddit readers out there but this one looks to be a bit more polished, with color coded comment threads and full inbox support. Sure, it may not get you a date with I_am_the_cheese or highlight stuff that’s already been on 4chan, but it’s a native Android Reddit client and I’m sure it will go more than OK.

After announcing a new partnership with Intel, MasterCard is revealing a new collaboration to help spread the use of its NFC technology through its PayPass program. The credit card giant is making a strategic investment in mFoundry, a company that powers mobile banking solutions for more than 500 banks and credit unions nationwide.

As part of the announcement, mFoundry will be offering MasterCard’s PayPass technology as a way for banks and credit unions to give their customers the option to pay for items with their mobile phones.

As you may have heard, PayPass is MasterCard’s payment method that lets you make purchases without having to swipe the magnetic strip on your card or provide your signature at PayPass enabled terminals. The technology uses NFC to transmit information.

MFoundry’s SaaS allows banks and other providers to give their customers mobile banking options, including payments. For example, mFoundry powers Starbucks’ Card Mobile. The company has capitalized on the recent growth in mobile banking. comScore recently reported that 32.5 million Americans accessed mobile banking information on their mobile devices, a 21% increase from the fourth quarter of 2010. And, almost 14 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now access banking information through their devices.

With the MasterCard partnership, mFoundry will allow banks to be able to offer MasterCard mobile banking options, including the use of PayPass and the NFC technology. MasterCard and mFoundry also will collaborate to provide mobile phone operators an application that supports Mobile PayPass, which will allow them to offer mobile contactless payments to their customers.

Obviously for MasterCard, the collaboration will help spread the use of its NFC technology to various banks, and thus consumers. And for mFoundry, the startup gets a strategic investment from one of the most well-known credit card companies in the world, and gets to gain some clout from the investment.

Some think Mark Cuban is a genius, some think he’s lucky. Either way, the guy has a knack for seeing value where others may not, for locating long-term investments, and for ending up on the right side of the deal. Some may disagree with his approach, but Mark Cuban is a billionaire, and while making money is a lot easier when you have stacks of it to play with, becoming a billionaire doesn’t happen by accident. (Lotto winners not included.)

For those on the younger side who haven’t yet made their first billion, the investor’s early story should be comforting: After graduating from college, Cuban started his career (auspiciously enough) as a bartender. Next, he worked for a year as a salesman at a PC software retailer, making $18K in salary, before being fired for meeting with a new client to close a deal instead of opening the retail store.

He later founded MicroSolutions, a systems integrator and software reseller, but it wasn’t until eight years after grabbing his diploma that he sold his first business, which CompuServe acquired for $6 million in 1990. And then, a bit more famously, he founded a company based on his mutual love of college basketball and webcasting (Audionet), turned it into Broadcast.com, and sold it to Yahoo at the height of the dotcom boom for $5.9 billion in stock.

Since then, he’s been involved in a number of projects, most notably helping build the Dallas Mavericks, a team in which he bought a majority stake back in 2000, into an annual playoff contender and Lebron-slaying NBA Champions in 2011.

He’s also become an increasingly active angel investor in tech startups over the last decade, (you can get a brief sense of the companies he’s invested in on his CrunchBase profile), and spends quite a bit of his time coaching young entrepreneurs.

So, seeing as he’s spent more than a few minutes growing businesses, investing in startups, and advising companies on how to grow, when to pivot, and how to make money (he even recently wrote a book on the subject), we took the opportunity to ask the investor a few questions on some topical issues facing the tech industry. Check out his responses below:

There’s a big debate going on about whether startups are overvalued / overfunded … is there really a series A crunch and do you think this will end badly?

It really depends on where you live. The approach to startups is far different in Silicon Valley than it is in the rest of the world. Valley startups start big. Everywhere else we take the lean, mean startup machine approach.

The former could run into cyclical financing problems because their success is dependent on exits first and operational profitability second. If the IPO market shuts again, and foreign investment dries up, the capital for Valley startups could be impacted.

As far as overfunding, it seems to me that the prevailing wisdom out West is that the only way to exit big is to start big. With that mindset there is no such thing as overfunding. But its not an approach I ever take. I’m funding multiple companies across the country every quarter. Trust me, none are overfunded. If they execute, they will get the cash they need.

Do you think Groupon is overvalued?

I like Groupon. Their valuation is whatever the market says it is. They can’t pay attention to that noise. They have to be relentless and focused on continuously adding value to their customers at the consumer and retail sides. If they can do it, they will laugh all the way to the bank.

We’ve seen the rise of Pandora and a host of interesting web radio/music services, like Spotify, take off recently. Curious how you view these players both as an investor/advisor. Do you see potential for Amazon/Google Music/Spotify etc to supplant iTunes?

It all comes down to licensing fees from the labels, both direct and statutory. One of my biggest professional mistakes at Broadcast.com was not fighting the DMCA harder. There are so many ridiculous and arbitrary limits that every music company has this as an overhang on their business.

I also worry about patent trolls coming in and killing this business.

As a guy who understands digital video better than most, what are some of the most interesting companies and trends there that you think we should be paying attention to?

Just remember one thing: The future of TV is TV. Television is still the best alternative to boredom. If you look at all the internet video companies that try to complement TV, they are doing well. If you look at those trying to replace TV, they are sucking wind. I categorize Netflix as doing well and a complement. They made a big mistake, but they are still the big dog.

Do you think Facebook has a chance to become the OS of the Internet? Or is social/friendsourcing really just in a bubble of its own?

Right now they are the platform that counts. So yes they have a chance to be the end all, be all going forward. They have become the home page for many of us. That said, their mobile solutions as a platform suck. They are very vulnerable to someone coming along and making social built on mobile a far better and more engaging experience than Facebook currently is.

And, what’s more, as a bonus for readers, Cuban has also agreed to answer three “top” questions posted in the comment section of this post. The three that receive the most “likes” will be chosen, so ask your own questions and “like” away. Also, a word of warning: He won’t answer basketball related questions, so keep your inquiries focused on tech and business.

Part of the reason that the investor and Mavs owner has been in a question-answering mood lately is that one of the startups to which he plays both investor and advisor — JungleCents — recently launched a giveaway where the winner receives a free lunch with Cuban. Once users sign up for JungleCents’ newsletter, they can then tweet at the investor, asking him questions on whatever topics they choose, to which Cuban has been responding in kind.

The Mavs owner is a good guy, but obviously JungleCents’ model is one that Cuban sees great value in — enough so that he’s allowed the startup to leverage his own personal brand for promotional purposes. Of course, this is in his best interest, but how many investors agree to do that?

Cuban invested $1.5 million in JungleCents back October of last year and is joined by a board that includes Hollywood producer Peter Safran, Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert from Garage Ventures. The reason Cuban believes in this San Francisco-based startup? Aside from the fact that in less than a year the startup’s deals are reaching 2.2 million email addresses, publishers included, and the user sign-up rate has tripled over the last 3 months, the company is taking an alternative approach to daily deals.

JungleCents uses a lead generation model — similar to how airlines and travel companies like Orbitz pay sites like Kayak for bringing them new customers — to give publishers supplemental revenue streams.

To do this, JungleCents accepts gift cards from companies instead of cash, then runs those as daily deals, which it offers as discounts. (You can read our initial coverage of the startup here.) In its recent partnership with men’s lifestyle magazine, AskMen, for example, the startup partnered with men’s merchandiser Bonobos to offer discounts on their products, which it then displayed both on JungleCents.com and AskMen.com.

This allows readers of AskMen to take advantage of a deal that’s pertinent to the content of the magazine, without having to leave the site. Customers might pay $48 for a $100 voucher to spend at Bonobos, which users can cash in whenever they want — all at once, or over time.

When I asked the owner what it was specifically that attracted him to JungleCents, he said: “I like the idea of white label deal solutions that allow sites to leverage their own traffic. The core competency of most websites is rarely if ever going to be to source deals. Junglecents can do it for them and take a share of the profits. It’s low overhead, lots of sweat equity so not a big cash investment, but with high leverage if they can match the right deals to highly trafficked sites”.

There you have it. Fire away with your questions.