Category: Tech news

On July 28 2009, a pair of iPhone applications that offered support for Google Voice were unceremoniously, and without warning, removed from Apple’s App Store. We then learned that Apple had blocked the official Google Voice application as well, which eventually led to an FCC inquiry. A year later, Google Voice was still missing from the App Store. Now it looks like there may be a glimmer of hope for getting Google Voice on your iPhone.

This morning Apple released guidelines explicitly spelling out for the first time what it would reject from the App Store. Sean Kovacs, the developer of third party Google Voice application GV Mobile (which was removed from the App Store over a year ago), read through each of the 100+ rules, and he concluded that his app didn’t seem to violate any of them. He emailed Apple’s approval board to see if he could possibly get his app reinstated. The response was encouraging.

I reached out to Kovacs, who says that an Apple representative responded that given the new guidelines released today, he was welcome to resubmit GV Mobile for review. Which is a much better response than he’s been getting before now (radio silence).

Of course, nothing is certain yet. This could be a case of an App Store reviewer stepping out of line and making a mistake. It’s possible that Apple will say this violates rule 8.3, which states “Apps which appear confusingly similar to an existing Apple product or advertising theme will be rejected” (this is similar to the “reducing functionality” explanation that Apple gave to the FCC last summer).

Or it could mean that Google Voice, albeit from a third party application, could finally be making its way back to the iPhone.

We’ve reached out to both Apple and Google to see if there has been a change and will update when we hear back.

Update: Google has given us this statement:

“We currently offer Google Voice mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and we offer an HTML5 web app for the iPhone. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

Earlier this week, Erick wrote about Ebyline – a new site, founded by some former LA Times-ers that promised to make it easier for talented freelance journalists to get gigs with legitimate publications. Or to put it another way, if Associated Content makes you want to kill yourself, Ebyline is the site for you.

But will editors actually use it? We invited Giga Om founder Om Malik to join us in the studio for this week’s ‘Why Is This News‘ to tell us whether he’ll be finding his next crop of writers from amongst Ebyline’s vetted and verified ranks.

Spoiler alert: no.

Video below.

Contrary to popular opinion, the reason Yahoo’s metrics have been stagnant and its stock has lost half its value in the last two-and-a-half years isn’t because Google did search better than Yahoo. It’s because Yahoo turned its back on what it did well: Building the first online mass media content superstore. In doing so, it let the younger, sexier, faster-growing Google define what Yahoo wasn’t. It’s precisely the mistake that Jeff Bezos and Amazon didn’t make when eBay was the ecommerce, monkeys-could-run-this-train darling.

Yahoo was never going to win at search, just like Amazon never would have won at auctions. It wasn’t in the company’s DNA. Even after millions spent to build better search and search monetization systems (PANAMA!) there were obvious gaffes. Vinny Lingham, who used to have a business running massive offshore keyword campaigns for US companies, hated buying them on Yahoo because he had to separately purchase keywords for each international territory, but with Google, the purchase experience was all unified on one screen.

That’s because Yahoo was a company built on department-store like fiefdoms, with each country and division enjoying its own silo, vying for a slice of the front page with one another. When Yahoo was in the throws of its Microsoft take-over drama, I asked the head of one of Yahoo’s largest and most successful verticals what he thought about it. He answered, “It doesn’t really affect me, my division is basically a small business, and we can be the same small business inside of Microsoft.”

You could see this approach mirrored in Yahoo’s always cluttered front page vs. Google’s stubbornly Spartan one. Google as an organization was almost allergic to the idea of giving people anything else to do to keep them on its site, while Yahoo’s former-CEO Tim Koogle once bragged that search queries were going down, keeping people from leaving Yahoo. There was a basic DNA to the two companies that was at odds: One all about enabling discovery of the Web and one all about enabling discovery of….Yahoo.

It became fashionable to say Yahoo needed to be more of a technology company not a media company. But Yahoo was good at being a media company—it amassed an audience of half-a-billion people coming to its front page. When we launched TechTicker on Yahoo Finance it quickly got four-times the reach of CNBC. I’d love to take the credit, but that was the platform. Yahoo’s mistake was trying to become a Hollywood-style media company. Purple exclamation marks just aren’t Hollywood-cool no matter how many times Tom Cruise visits the campus.

Which brings us (belatedly) to the point of this post: Google needs to stop trying to be Facebook and focus on extending and investing in what makes Google successful: The Algorithm. Social media is about people, not algorithms. In a weird, way we’ve gone from content being in vogue (early AOL, Yahoo) to algorithms being in vogue (Google and those weird Ask.com ads) and now back to content—albeit the user generated kind. It’s just not Google’s strong point anymore than search was Yahoo’s. You can bet somewhere inside Google a manager is yelling that Facebook surpassed it today in time spent on site. But as the contrast with Yahoo shows, Google was never playing that game. That’s like me being jealous of Stephanie Meyer because she sold more books on vampires.

Google has spent billions acquiring social media companies between Slide, YouTube, investing in Zynga and other smaller deals. And yet, I don’t hear a damn bit of buzz about this new gaming platform. What are people excited about? Instant search and priority inbox.

Sure, as a public company Google needs to grow, but the best opportunity isn’t all this social nonsense, it’s Android. It’s clearly where Eric Schmidt’s heart is. And it’s where Google is using endemic advantages — a suite of cloud-based apps people love and a hoard of cash and market influence– to do something no one else could: Pose a threat to the iPhone. With social Google is working against its own endemic advantages. And with the billions of people bridging the digital divide via mobile, a low-cost, open smart phone strategy comes at the exact right moment, versus Google’s social strategy which comes way too late.

Google hasn’t gone the Yahoo way yet, but it’s on the precipice: Don’t let Facebook define what you’re not, continue to excel at what you do well.

Over the weekend Philip Kaplan, co-founder of social purchasing site Blippy tweeted out a link to Steve Jobs demoing iTunes Ping, with the added sly comment ,“Looks like Blippy.” Curious about what Jobs’ movement into the social sharing space means for Blippy, we brought Kaplan into the TCTV studio and grilled him on what exactly Jobs did or did not copy, how often iTunes purchases were shared on Blippy, and whether or not the concept of social shopping has hit mainstream.

Highlights:

“I’m not saying that anybody copied anybody.”

“If Ping becomes popular, those users will potentially be looking for something like Blippy. I don’t think it’s too much of a threat”

“While lot of people were expecting more from Apple [re: Ping], if you look at the first iPod by today’s standards it’s not so great. If there’s one thing Apple is really good at its improving their products.”

“If iTunes is the only place that you shop, Ping seems like the place to to do it.”

“There’s nothing that drives an entrepreneur more than ‘It can’t be done’ or ‘That’s never going to work,’ Those are the exact things we need to hear. The fact that Apple is now basically in the same business is a double-edged sword.”

Kaplan also reveals that Blippy users have shared over 1 million iTunes purchases thus far, which comprise about 40% of the total purchases shared on Blippy (around 2.5 million). While this proportion may seem high, Kaplan is not worried about Ping as a direct competitor, as iTunes is only one of 250,000 stores on Blippy (0.0004% of total merchants). He explains the 40% statistic thus, “People who buying things from iTunes, buy things from iTunes almost twice as often as they buy things from Amazon, Ebay, Starbucks, and Walmart combined.  Not surprising, considering it’s much easier (and cheaper) to buy stuff from iTunes than it is to go to Walmart.”

After privacy scuffles and many naysayers, it seems as though Apple’s foray into transaction sharing platforms is the sincerest form of flattery for Blippy and the burgeoning social shopping space which includes Woot, Swipely, and even behemoth Amazon.

“When we came up with the idea for sharing purchases and launched Blippy, the concept seemed crazy to a lot of people. But we knew that other companies would eventually adopt the model once users saw how powerful and fun it is.”

Ah. The sweet sound of “I told you so.”

Ever since Facebook rolled out their Like button in April, it has been spreading over the web like wild fire. Since then, they’ve been tweaking it a bit here and there to improve the layout and functionality. Today brings more improvements.

As they note on their Developer Blog, the new Like button gains three things: the ability to like items within apps, the ability to link the Like button to Pages, and a new option to have a “box count” layout for the button that shows the number of likes above it.

The most interesting change is the first one mentioned. Previously, you could only like applications themselves, but now you can dig into applications and like elements within them. For example, you can now like virtual goods in an app like Farmville if Zynga implements this (which they undoubtedly will). You can also now like things like individual movies within entertainment apps, or causes.

The next change is a little confusing. Facebook now has a URL field in the Like button creation tool that you can use to link the Like button to that page. What this seems to do is allow you to create a Like button for something elsewhere besides the actual page you’re liking. So, for example, I could make a Like button for TechCrunch and include it on another blog.

Finally, Facebook has added a new view option for the Like button. The “box count” layout shows you the number of likes something has received above the button itself. This is a pretty standard view for sharing buttons on the web.

Update: Facebook clarified what they meant about the Like button linking a bit:

The URL field in the tool is not new and is for pointing to individual blog post URLs (TechCrunch actually does this with the Like button). The update is that you can now point a Like button to a Facebook Page, similar to how the Like box functions.

I’ve spent two days listening to and reading near-constant coverage of the wacko who’s planning to burn Korans in Gainsville, Florida, and increasingly the stories have been about whether or not all the press attention has been irresponsible. Whether constantly covering the outrage has made it a global one, versus something that only his fifty parishioners would have known about. If the events put American soldiers in danger—that’s a pretty real issue.

The media has long wrestled with how much it should give the public what it wants versus what it thinks the public needs, and it became more pronounced as the readership of stories became immediately measurable and comparable. Mad about Lindsey Lohan’s jail time being covered by serious news outlets? Groaning at another TechCrunch post about the iPhone? Well, then stop reading, watching, and commenting on them. Like a kid throwing a tantrum, the easiest way to get media you don’t like or think is irresponsible to go away is to stop paying attention. If a blog posts in a forest and no one is there to comment does it really exist? Not according to most bloggers.

But in the last year or so social media has made it more than an issue of we-write, you-read, so-we-write-more-until-you-stop-reading. Social media has given the world a persistent, open conversation. It’s no longer up to media to legitimize and publicize a story. On stories like this one, media has to choose to respond or not to a story that’s already been legitimized and publicized. This was a conversation before NPR, BBC or any other major news outlet weighed in. Once it has become enough of a conversation that world leaders were having to comment—how does the media not cover that?

There’s a lot of gray area and subjectivity surrounding the responsibility in being a reporter. Is it our job to tell the truth as we see it and damn the consequences or is it to be like Marty McFly in Back to the Future—observe but make sure you don’t do anything to affect the course of history! Social media hasn’t changed those questions—it’s broadened them from ivory tower press to anyone with a Twitter feed or a blog. The impact of social media to bring about world peace has been over-stated, but the destructive impact hasn’t. Distribution has been splintered into a million little pieces and so to as the responsibility for how you wield your own sliver of power.

This morning, Apple finally released a set of guidelines to iOS developers — a move which should go a long way in making the process seem less arbitrary. We’ve already posted the basics of what you need to know — those are, the high-level rules written in refreshingly non-corporate speak (“we don’t need anymore Fart apps” and “if you run to the press and trash us, it never helps”). But I’ve also gone over all the individual sections with the more specific rules, and found a number of interesting ones worth pointing out.

Behold: the best of the App Store rules. (As Apple notes, this is a “living document” subject to change at any time.):

2.9 Apps that are “beta”, “demo”, “trial”, or “test” versions will be rejected

No “beta” huh? Now we have another rift between Apple and Google.

2.11 Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them

This should stop the annoying trend of one developer making a hit app and dozens (if not more) of developers rushing to copy it and polluting the App Store. The Fart apps were a great example of this, but there have been many others.

2.13 Apps that are primarily marketing materials or advertisements will be rejected.

Good. But I hope Apple actually sticks to this with bigger brands as well.

2.18 Apps that encourage excessive consumption of alcohol or illegal substances, or encourage minors to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes, will be rejected

So apps that encourage moderate consumption of illegal substances are okay? Oh, no wait, I must be reading that wrong.

2.20 Developers “spamming” the App Store with many version of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

Also good. Many will recall when developers would release 30 different apps version of the same app for various states or colors or other nonsense.

3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected

He who we shall not name? Android?

3.10 Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

Great; this has been going on far too often lately.

4.2 Apps that use location-based APIs for automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other devices will be rejected

Um, what? Is this like unmanned drones?

4.3 Apps that use location-based APIs for dispatch, fleet management, or emergency services will be rejected

Also interesting. A number of apps were working on this a few months ago, but you don’t hear about them any more.

5.6 Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind

What does this mean for location-based apps that want to push deals when you’re close-by to one, I wonder?

7.3 Apps that are designed predominantly for the display of ads will be rejected

There goes my iAd Pro app idea…

8.2 Apps that suggest or infer that Apple is a source or supplier of the app, or that Apple endorses any particular representation regarding quality or functionality will be rejected

This is interesting in that a number of developers now pitch us that “Apple loved our app” — this kind of stuff now clearly isn’t allowed in the App Store.

8.4 Apps that misspell Apple product names in their app name (i.e. GPS for Iphone, iTunz) will be rejected

Read: it’s “iPhone” morons, show some respect.

8.5 Use of protected 3rd party material (trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, otherwise proprietary content) requires a documented rights check which must be provided upon request

Goodbye 500 apps with the name “Twitter ______”

8.6 Google Maps and Google Earth images obtained via the Google Maps API can be used within an application if all brand features of the original content reamin unaltered and fully visible. Apps that cover up or modify the Google logo or copyright holders identifications will be rejected

Apple specifically protecting Google here, interesting. A lot of developers use Bing maps now too, but there’s no mention of them (though I think Google Maps may be easily accessed through the iOS development process).

9.3 Audio streaming content over a cellular network may not use more than 5MB over 5 minutes

So I assume Pandora and the like comply with this.

10.1 Apps must comply with all terms and conditions explained in the Apple iPhone Human Interface Guidelines and the Apple iPad Human Interface Guidelines

The first rule of the App Store: you do not make apps that look like crap.

10.4 Apps that create alternate desktop/home screen environments or simulate multi-app widget experiences will be rejected

Apple has been rejecting these for a while, but now it’s explicitly stated.

10.6 Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. The take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good it may be rejected

The second rule of the App Store: you do not make apps that looks like crap.

11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected

So no Facebook Credits? Or you’ll just have to use IAP to buy them?

11.3 Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected

So no using a Starbucks app to buy a cup of coffee?

11.8 Apps that use IAP to purchase access to built-in capabilities provided by iOS, such as the camera or the gyroscope, will be rejected

This is good — kills off many bait-and-switch possibilities.

11.9 Apps containing “rental” content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected

This, of course, doesn’t include Apple’s own iTunes app which has rental movies and TV shows which do expire.

11.11 In general, the more expensive your app, the more thoroughly we will review it

This is another one of those always-understood-but-never-stated things.

13.1 Apps that encourage users to use an Apple Device in a way that may cause damage to the device will be rejected

Damn, there goes my SMASH THIS iPHONE app.

14.2 Professional political satirists and humorists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean-spirited commentary

This one may cause some issues still. What exactly constitutes a “professional” here? Apple has obviously run into this issue before.

15.1 Apps portraying realistic images of people or animals being killed or maimed, shot, stabbed, tortured or injured will be rejected

Just kind of humorous the verbs they included. Why not “blown up”?

15.3 “Enemies” within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity

I assume this doesn’t include Nazis.

15.5 Apps that includes games of Russian roulette will be rejected

My favorite specific rule of all. Was there a problem with people submitting these? Why on Earth is this so specific?

16.2 Apps that are primarily designed to upset or disgust users will be rejected

There goes my “100 Best Vomits” app idea…

18.1 Apps containing pornographic material, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “explicit descriptions or displayers of sexual organs or activities intended to simulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings”, will be rejected

Interesting that we get a specific definition when earlier, Apple’s overall wording is “We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it’. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it” — a quote which is in reference to pornography.

18.2 Apps that contain user generated content that is frequently pornographic (ex “Chat Roulette” apps) will be rejected

Sort of funny that Apple wants to make sure you get the spelling of their products right, but they butcher “Chatroulette”. Also, that sucks for Chatroulette. Also, what’s up with Apple’s obsession with “roulette” (see: 15.5)?

19.2 Apps may contain or quote religious text provided the quotes or translations are accurate and not misleading. Commentary should be educational or informative rather than inflammatory.

So, no Fox News app then?

20.3 It must be permissible by law for the developer to run a lottery app, and a lottery app must have all of the following characteristics: consideration, chance, and a prize

So no rigged apps. The Quiz Show rule.

21.1 Apps that include the ability to make donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free

Good.

21.2 The collections of donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an SMS

Interesting. I assume this is so Apple doesn’t need a loophole around the IAP stuff.

22.5 Apps that are designed for use as illegal gambling aids, including card counters, will be rejected

Card counting isn’t technically illegal, but card counting aids probably are.

Apple concludes the guidelines by noting:

Thank you for developing for iOS. Even though this document is a formidable list of what not to do, please also keep in mind the much shorter list of what you must do. Above all else, join us in trying to surprise and delight users. Show them their world in innovative ways, and let them interact with it like never before. In our experience, users really respond to polish, both in functionality and user interface. Go the extra mile. Give them more than they expect. And take them places where they have never been before. We are ready to help.

Fair enough.

[images: Paramount Pictures]

GetGlue, a social browsing assistant that shows ratings and recommendations of movies, books, restaurants, stocks, and more on the web, has been on a roll lately when it comes to the startup’s mobile strategy. In less than three months, GetGlue has launched a mobile website, an Android app and an iPhone app. Today, GetGlue is completing the package with an iPad app and a new deal with Fox.

Similar to GetGlue’s other mobile offers, the iPad app allows users can to check-in to their favorite shows, music, movies and books, and see what their friends are enjoying in real-time. With each check-in, users earn points and stickers from GetGlue and other major brands. The app also allows users to rate their favorite shows, movies, music and books and receive personalized suggestions.

You can also share check-ins with your Twitter and Facebook friends, rate lists of popular shows, movies, music and books, receive weekly new releases and customized recommendations, and access existing reviews, clips and ratings for 20 million movies, books and albums.

The iPad app could definitely be a winner for GetGlue considering the fact that consumers use the device to consume the same media (movies, shows, books) that they would be voting on and checking-in to within the app. And the app tries to take advantage of the native UI elements and larger screen by creating overlays for conversations, giving users the ability to vote directly from the stream and more.

GetGlue, which recently landed a deal with HBO, is partnering with FOX to offer stickers for for fans of Glee, Bones and two new shows premiering this fall, Raising Hope and Lone Staris. The startup will also be unveiling new stickers for shows and movies from HBO, Showtime, PBS, TwiT, and Universal Pictures.

GetGlue is seeing an average of 5 million check-ins and recommendations monthly and is growing fast. The company, which recently ramped up its personalization features, makes money through affiliate relationships when users click through from the site and app to buy books, movies, and more. GetGlue faces competition from Comcast’s Tunerfish and Miso.

From the very same Internet that brought you The Twitter Movie, The YouTube Movie, The Auction Site Movie and The Other Social Network Movie comes today’s Ping parody: Another Social Network Movie. Something tells me that people are just going to keep making these parodies of David Fincher’s The Social Network until they run out of websites. Can’t wait to see what people come up with for Orkut.

While this trailer primarily focuses on the travails of the Ping user interface,  you can’t help but sympathize as the beleaguered  user checks for iTunes updates, dramatically agrees to the 36 page terms of service, restarts their computer, gets their login denied, tries to upload a photo, ends up following Keith Urban, etc …

My favorite part: “Ping is as simple as the push of 47 buttons.”

Football season is upon us and that means many of you are making your fantasy football picks. While ESPN, Yahoo and others provide data and statistics on players to help you make decisions, numberFire is hoping to be an additional useful resource for fantasy football picks.

Originally presented from the TechCrunch Disrupt DemoPit, numberFire is an application that applies quantitative analysis and statistical reasoning to the world of fantasy football. Not only does numberFire have recommendations of pics, but the site also provides contextual data supporting each decision.

For example, let’s take Tom Brady, who is playing against Cincinnati this week and is known has one of the best quarterbacks because of his accuracy and decision-making. In order to find comparable players to Tom, numberFire evaluates his statistics and compares that data to players in the past in order to find a past QB who plays in a similar style and has performed with similar statistics. For Tom Brady in 2010, his closest comparable is Brett Favre in 2007.

NumberFire founder Nik Bonaddio says that the player is only one part of the equation. His site also factors in the team (Patriots), the defense he’s going up against (Cincinnati) and the situation (the start of the season so players may be rusty, off the field distractions such as injuries). numberFire also evaluates games and situations to find comparable situations. In this case, says Bonaddio, the closest comparable is San Diego vs. Atlanta in 2004.

NumberFire will be free for the first month (as to prove to people that the site can beat the predictions that platforms like ESPN provide, says Bonaddio), and will then charge a monthly subscription ($7.99/mo) or a flat-fee for the rest of the year ($19.99).

One interesting tidbit about Bonaddio: Before he demoed numberFire at TechCrunch Disrupt, he was on a primetime episode of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” hosted by Regis Philbin and won $100,000. He subsequently quit his job to develop and launch this project.

Ding, ding! It’s round four of our Super Angel v. VC SMACKDOWN. Both of our pugilist Davids live and work in Silicon Valley. Given that today’s topic is about whether or not the heft of East Coast Super Angels like Josh Kopelman, Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson is pulling the center of early stage funding gravity away from famed Sand Hill Road, you’d think it’d be nothing but agreement. “Oh, no, Silicon Valley is still the center of the universe.”

But you’d be wrong. In the first moments of this clip, the Davids can’t even agree over whether “management fees are great” and whether establishment VCs are “fat and happy” or “fat and sad” given the disastrous IPO market.

David Hornik of August Capital makes the distinction between hot companies found in other locales like Groupon and who funded them. In a lot of cases, it wasn’t local VCs, it was VCs flying in from the Valley. Put another way: Great companies can start anywhere, but not everyone takes enough risk to fund them.

Ultimately this segment ends in agreement that Silicon Valley will maintain its “market share” of venture capital influence, but that a big shakeout on the firm and partner level is unavoidable. (One note: I don’t buy that market share in question is just 30% globally and less in the US, as McClure says. Both NVCA and Dow Jones numbers for show that Valley companies get between one-quarter and one-third of venture capital dollars invested in the United States, and a huge percentage of Sand Hill Road money flows outside of the Valley. So the percentage of money coming from here would have to be substantially higher. Historically it was 75%–those numbers could well be dated, but it doesn’t logically make sense that it’s less than 30%.)

Check out the earlier segments of our SMACKDOWN on “Why the Hate?” “Are Super Angels a Phase?” and “Are Super Angels only about the Flip?”

For the first time ever, after 250,000 apps have been developed, Apple finally decided to release some guidelines for developers to help them understand the app review process. The document is not only informative, but also entertaining to read. In general, for an app to make it through the somewhat opaque-until-now App approval process it needs to be a serious app (“We don’t need any more Fart apps”), it can’t crash or have bugs, it can’t be a beta or “practice” app that “looks like it was cobbled together in a few days,” and can’t “cross the line” in terms of being offensive. Oh, and when Apple rejects your app, if “you run to the press and trash us,” that will count against you.

The whole document is about keeping developers in line, but at least it is done with humor. Apps that contain objectionable material or pornography will be rejected, as will any apps which try to go around the App Store for payments or purchases, or have “interfaces that mimic any iPod interface.” Also, don’t try to use any of the “location-based APIs for automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other devices.” All of this, of course, is subject to change.

Apple also acknowledges that it is being stricter with apps than with songs or books in iTunes, which some might say is hypocritical. But here is how Apple responds, along with some high-level principles (the full guidelines are embedded below).

We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store. It may help to keep some of our broader themes in mind:

• We have lots of kids downloading lots of apps, and parental controls don’t work unless the parents set them up (many don’t). So know that we’re keeping an eye out for the kids.
• We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.
• If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your ?rst practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
• We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask?  Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
• If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
• This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.

Image credit: Flickr/Michael Stout

One thing is clear to me now: GM gets it. Government Motors now understands the importance of cutting edge technology. They understand rapid development processes. But most importantly, the once largest auto maker understands the future. If only they had “gotten it” back at the turn of the century, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in now.

I recently spent some time at a couple GM facilities where in between various PowerPoint presentations mainly about OnStar and the Volt, I was shown several labs and testing areas. All this was neat and about what you would expect: motion simulators, virtual testing, all housed in cold cement buildings. But it was the overall message that instilled hope in me that the automaker born in my hometown of Flint is actually on the right path.

After the grand tour with several fellow journalists we were escorted to a pair of early production Chevy Volts. This is where it all came together. Love it or hate it, the Chevy Volt saved GM and you can’t even buy it yet. Let me explain.

At first glance, the stats from free text messaging startup GOGII and its textPlus application sound like they’re too big by an order of magnitude: 3.7 billion messages sent since June 2009. 8.5 million downloads. 23 million phone numbers in the network. But they’re real, and they’re a big business. Today the company is launching two new features that make the textPlus experience even richer, with support for sending images and a nifty new feature called ‘Face Text’.

The first feature is self-explanatory: you can attach images to your outbound text messages and send them for free. The second feature, called Face Text, is related, but it comes with a twist. Upon activating the feature, textPlus will take a photo using your phone’s front-facing camera whenever you hit the send button, allowing you to quickly attach facial expressions whenever you send a message (think of it as emoticons meeting the photo booth — see the screenshot above). You can turn it off and there’s a countdown timer so the feature should never surprise you, and I suspect that the teenage audience that absolutely loves these apps will eat this up.

GOGII is one of a new breed of startup building on the relatively ancient and ubiquitous technology of text messaging. They compete with Pinger’s TextFree, which we wrote about last week and has similarly massive stats, and both companies have grown by leaps and bounds in the last year (interestingly, both Pinger and GOGII are part of the Kleiner Perkins iFund).

GOGII’s textPlus shares at least one major feature in common with Pinger’s TextFree: it allows you to send unlimited free text messages to your friends. But textPlus has a few differences. For one, it doesn’t give you a new unique phone number like TextFree does — instead you’ll have to message your friend’s username to the GOGII shortcode (users will be able to get their own phone numbers in the near future).

Another key differences lies in the community nature of textPlus, which TextFree doesn’t offer yet. The service effectively brings chat rooms to the mobile phone — fire up the app and you can create or join a chat room about, say, skateboarding, which behaves a lot like the AOL chat rooms of yore (around 500,000 communities have been created so far). But you can also elect to receive push notifications whenever there’s a new message, which turns into a powerful tool when you combine the feature with a private community. GOGII says that many people create private communities for their families or sports teams, which can be powerful for staying in touch with a small group: when a member of these private communities sends a chat message, it gets immediately relayed to everyone else in the community.

Looking for a cheap way to stream your tunes all around the house? Then look no further than this cheap DIY WiFi radio.

Video blogger Tinkernet shows us how to build one by using an Asus WL-520GU and a USB sound adapter, and best of all it will cost you less than $50. The video shows the steps involved in putting it all together using Windows. If you want to use a different OS then simply visit MightyOhm for detailed step by step instructions.

I always have my laptop connected to my stereo, now, when I build one of these I can just stream directly to my stereo. Best of all, I can control it from my iPhone!

Cheap WiFi Radio originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/09/08.

© tech.nocr.at 2010 |
Forums |
Permalink |
Comments |
Read more in Hacking and Security |
Add to del.icio.us |
Stumble it |
Digg this

Explore more in: asus, music, stream, wifi