Apple has made inroads into the professional market with the iPhone—the company has noted that some Fortune 500 companies have deployed them alongside or even replacing BlackBerrys. Despite this, analysis of app usage suggests that it remains a mostly personal device.
Mobile analytic firm Localytics examined logs of use of third-party apps and found that app use during the week typically begins to ramp up around 5am and slowly increases to a peak around 9pm. Weekdays also tend to have a little bump in use right around lunch time.
On weekends, however, use starts picking up around 6am, reaching a steady peak around noon until 11pm. App usage sharply ramps down after 11, but slightly slower than it does on a typical week day.
This usage pattern is typical for a device that is used for personal rather than business reasons. However, it's also possible that business users are either sticking to Apple's supplied apps or are using custom-developed in-house apps for specific business needs. For instance, a business user is more likely to fire up Mail or Calendar than, say, Tweetie or Plants vs Zombies during the work day. Localytics notes that it expects to find similar usage patterns for the iPad, and that developers may want to consider these patterns when designing apps for either platform.
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We all need extra power for our iPhone at one time or another and if you play lots of games, that need probably comes frequently. A company called Unioo has unveiled three new batteries and two of them connect to the charge connector on the iPhone.
A company called Power A has offered up a new Universal Remote Case for the iPhone that works with a free app to turn the iPhone into a remote control. The system lets the iPhone control any IR device.
Macworld is looking at several apps that the business user with an iPhone will want to check out. The four apps are all business card scanners to save you from typing in contacts.
Google to Launch Server-Side Clipboard for Docs http://bit.ly/akf8ns
One of the features that Google's online office program Google Docs lacks is a cloud-based version of Microsoft Office's "clipboard" feature. Although you can copy and paste when using Docs, it's a much simpler procedure. The keyboard shortcut "Ctrl + C" copies and "Ctrl + V" pastes, but it's a one-time process. You can't accumulate a collection of copied items for later pasting as you can with the Office clipboard.
Some may argue that's by design - Google likes to keep things simple. However, it appears that may not be the case, after all. As spotted by the Google Operating System blog, a new server-side clipboard looks like it may be close to launch.
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Considering Google's continuing advances in the enterprise space, it's not surprising that the company is interested in implementing a cloud-based clipboard to rival the one in Office. Although this may not be the sort of feature that everyday consumers and users of the free version of Docs care much about, it's a perfect example of the sort of feature that a business user needs. When crafting long documents, the ability to store a collection of text, images and other media for re-use throughout a particular file is a time-saving feature that many cannot live without. It's arguably even one of the top reasons why some feel they can't make a complete switch from their desktop office software, be that Microsoft Office or Open Office or something else, to an online service like Google Docs.
According to the blog post that uncovered this feature (still in testing it appears), the Google Docs clipboard looks like an implementation of a service called Google Cloudboard, revealed back in fall of last year via an accidentally publicized internal feedback form. Cloudboard was described as a "server-side clipboard for Google Apps." Like Cloudboard, the new clipboard works within Google Docs and other Google services including Gmail and Calendar - at least that's what has been spotted so far. However, when the Cloudboard feature was discovered, it was described as working with services outside of Google Apps, too. For example, copying from Picasa, YouTube, Maps and even Google Image Search were cited as use cases for the Cloudboard.
The Cloudboard/clipboard Google has in mind could be handy for heavy Gmail users, especially if it became a feature of the Gmail service itself. It also somewhat brings to mind the Windows Live Mail Quick Add feature which integrates Bing searches, images and video into the online webmail program via a sidebar panel. Google's clipboard could easily do the same and more.
In Google's case, clipboard content wouldn't just remain in the program while your Docs/Apps session was active - it would actually remain on Google's Servers for an entire month. According to a now-public Google Help Article:
Content you copy to the server clipboard is stored on Google's servers and remains there until 30 days have passed since you last took action on (for example, copied) a given content selection. Even if a document is deleted, anything you copied from that document to the server clipboard will still exist on Google's servers for that 30-day period. You can delete all items stored on the server clipboard by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting Clear all items.
The article also reveals how the Clipboard content is tied to your Google Account as opposed to one particular computer. "That means you can copy more than one selection and then choose which one to paste later, the page reads. "It also means you can copy something on one computer and then paste it on another."
Although the Google Docs blog hasn't formally announced this feature (as of the time of writing), we're confident that it's more than a rumor at this point. Usually when Google gets around to creating Help documentation, the feature is near launch...sometimes even hours away. We hope that's the case here, too.
Image credit: googlesystem.blogspot.com
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- Niklas SjostromSexting is bad according to LG Electronics, but it may be good for RIM, which has seen a record number of teens and young people signing up for a blackberry over the past year, attracted mainly by the magnetic pull of its Blackberry Messenger service.
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"A lot of kids say they would rather a Blackberry than an iPhone because of BBM," a Blackberry spokeswoman told TG Daily at a Mobile World Congress (MWC) press event on Monday night.
"They like to be able to message their friends, and even flirt with random strangers" she added, alluding to a phenomenon by which people search for others’ Blackberry PINs online.
Just what parents want their 16 year old sons and daughters to be doing.
This also blazes a new trail for RIM, which has – until very lately – been almost exclusively focused on the enterprise and business user. But teens seem to flocking to Blackberry in droves, with the number one reason being the free messaging service which makes SMSing friends somewhat obsolete.
"Over the past few months I’ve started to see a lot of young girls and guys, teenagers and university students choosing Blackberry because they realize its social and rich media capabilities," the Blackberry spokeswoman told us.
"Young people want a phone that lets them use Facebook, Twitter, MSN, video, has a decent camera, and we have all that. Plus, the attraction of Blackberry is proving to be a very strong incentive."
Guess Sexting sells.
