Ipad

Google Introduces Better Word and PowerPoint Previews for Google Docs Mobile —

Just last week, Google introduced better Microsoft Word previews for the desktop version of Gmail. Today, Google also launched a similar feature for the mobile version of Google Docs, the company's online office suite. Now, Android, iPhone and iPad users can see high-fidelity previews of their Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents right in their mobile browsers.

Sponsor

These previews retain almost all of the formatting from the original document, including headlines and columns, as well as footnotes and endnotes. Until now, you had to download these documents to view them on your mobile device. In the mobile previewer, you can pan and zoom within a page. On Apple's platforms, you can also use the pinch-to-zoom gesture to zoom in or out.

Sadly, the new previewer does not support Excel spreadsheets. Given that a lot of people use spreadsheets in lieu of a full-blown database to store information, it would be nice if Google allowed its users to preview these documents as well.

Docs Only: No New Previewer for Mobile Gmail (Yet)

Just a few days ago, Google also launched a new version of its document previewer for the desktop version of Gmail. This new previewer also provides users with high-fidelity previews and replaces the old "view as HTML" feature in Gmail with a far superior offering. For now, though, the mobile version of Gmail does not offer the new Google Docs previews yet, though we would be surprised if Google didn't add this feature very soon.

Discuss

Will You Pay for Hulu? —

Will You Pay for Hulu? is a post from Chris Pirillo

I’m betting one of the biggest reasons you’re a Hulu fan would be the fact that consumption doesn’t cost you anything. It looks as though the company will soon be switching over to a paid model much like you’d find with Netflix. They are also looking to expand the service onto devices such as the Xbox 360 and iPad.

Hulu, which generated an estimated $100 million in advertising revenue last year, will continue to offer newer episodes of shows like Fox’s “Glee” free of charge, but it will also charge viewers a monthly fee to see older episodes and other content, two of the sources said.

Hulu gained about $100 million in advertising revenue last year. They will reportedly continue to offer new episodes of your favorite shows free of charge. Watching older episodes and other content will likely require a monthly fee. Advertising is what has allowed the service to remain free up until this point. Competition in this market is fierce, and Hulu is stepping up its game in order to be one of the top dogs in consumption services.

Will you pay a fee to catch up on your shows, or will you look elsewhere for them?

• Why is a Mozilla evangelist unhappy with Apple?
• Could an Adam tablet rival the iPad?
• What was your first hand-held gaming system?
• China says that they will continue to censor the Internet as they see fit.
• Are you at the end of your rope when trying to decide what gadgets to buy?
• Do you feel Microsoft should release their own line of computers?
• Is your Direct TV DVR giving you a migraine? Perform two system reboots and call me in the morning.
• The Red Laser iPhone app can help you become a smarter shopper.
• What advantages (or disadvantages) are there to shopping online?
• Would you run Linux on an MSI X600 laptop?
• Windows 7 was NOT your idea! It was mine.
• If you could ask your 20-years-in-the-future self a question, what would you want to know?
• What’s missing from iPhone 4?
• Have you gotten to play with a Panasonic Lumix G2?
• Could you give up any of your technology – even for a day?
• BP bought out top sponsor links from Google and Yahoo in an attempt to improve the company image.
• What social networking site do you spend the most time on?
• BeFunky offers awesome photo editing and effects tools for everyday people.
• Do you like your boss?
• The 2010 Mazda3: What’s up with that smile?
• If the iPad “goes anywhere,” why isn’t it allowed at Yankee Stadium?
• Are you a fan of “no-cost” software?

You don’t have to pay a monthly fee to gain access to all of the hottest software and apps for all of your machines and devices.

• What Would You Do With a Million Dollars?
• Amazon Doesn’t Only Do Media
• CNN Blogger Bunch: Windows 7 and Hulu Subscriptions
• Who Will Dominate the Internet?
• Do Your Research – on Every Topic
• BuddyTV
• Do You Hulu?
• Want a CPU Magazine Discount Subscription?
• What Kind of Magazines do You Like?
• Is .Mac Worth Buying?

How is it that a leading newspaper with a global reach doesn’t get it. I mean here we have the New York Times competing with all the other big brand papers to establish a foothold on the Web and yet when an iPad app uses their publicly available RSS feed they get all pissed off and have it yanked from the Apple app store.

Not only that but they sent Apple the take-down notice on the same day that the app got high praise from no other than Steve Jobs during the WWDC conference keynote speech. I am of course talking about the Pulse RSS reader app that everyone who has used it has nothing but good things to say about it.

This action of course has lead to the take-down being the hot topic of discussion in the tech blogosphere this morning with just about everyone wonder what the hell is up with the New York Times.

From Kara Swisher at Boomtown

Kothari said that the pair plan to contact Apple in the morning and take steps to remove Times material from the feeds.

It is not immediately clear why they need to, since Pulse draws from publicly available Times RSS feeds, as do many other apps, and does no scraping.

In fact, Pulse is little more than a really well-designed RSS reader, which is what the Times said it was in its write-up. You add feeds to it and it visualizes them in a way that’s easy to get through.

From Charlie Sorrel at Wired

Pulse takes the plain text from the NYT RSS feed and displays it. If you choose to read further, it opens the actual NYT page in a new browser window which, like every other in-app browser, uses Safari’s webkit engine to display it. The person reading it is therefore getting the exact same content as they would if reading in Safari.

Clearly the NYT doesn’t understand the purpose of RSS.

From Mathew Ingram at GigaOM

It’s not clear why the New York Times decided to target the Pulse app, however, apart from the fact that it is (or was, until it was pulled) one of the most popular paid apps on the iPad. There are dozens of applications and services that do fundamentally the same thing as the news-reading app does, by pulling in the RSS feeds of media sites such as the New York Times — and many of them are paid applications, just as Pulse is. There are also many websites, including Yahoo and Google’s customized homepages, that allow users to embed RSS feeds from other sites.

The argument being put forward by the NYT lawyers boils down to a section of their Terms of Service when it comes to the newspaper’s RSS feeds

The Pulse News Reader app makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.

Well I hate to break the news to the NYT’s obviously overpaid legal counsel but this is how just about every RSS reader out there operates. Are they now going to start going after Google Reader or my favorite reader, FeedDemon, after all I paid for the licence to use it (or at least to remove the ad) which is no different that me buying Pulse from the App Store.

The funniest part of this whole thing – one of New York Times’ own bloggers gave Pulse high praise

Pulse is a stylish and easy-to-use news aggregator. Users select which news sources to follow and the latest articles are presented in a grid of texts and photos. Users can finger-swipe back and forth across various articles from a single news source, or up and down through up to 20 news sources.

This is definitely one case where the lawyers should have been lead back to their cage and told to shut up.

image courtesy of alphonsolabs.com

Online Video Daily: Another Failed Digital Model Scrambles To The iPad Lifeboat — How much more legacy media can the iPad be expected to save? Newspapers and magazines, having failed to make the money they wanted on the Web, are lurching towards the tablet format in the hopes the larger, lusher platform will attract more serious ad and consumer dollars. And now one of the biggest disappointments in early mobile media, mobile TV, makes its play for the iPad. Cellular industry chipmaker Qualcomm has created a device that will connect its network of streaming live broadcasts to a WiFi iPad. The small unit taps into a network that Qualcomm grew for its MediaFLO over the past four years.

Like we didn’t know this wouldn’t happen eh.

Morgan Stanley is calling it the reshaping of the PC market and in the process gives Apple a great big pat on the back by raising its target price to $332.00. Leading the charge at Morgan Stanley is Katy Huberty who raised her iPad sales estimates to 10 million units in 2010 (up from 6 million). At the same time she believes the company’s stock price could go as high as $440 by May 2011.

What’s turned her head? The blistering sales of the iPad and the diminishing growth of the netbooks’. Among her findings:

• The iPad is on track to become the fastest ramping mobile Internet device out of the gate and one of the most popular in history (see Exhibit 2).
• Early iPad usage patterns validate the tablet as a computing device. It’s already overtaken the Web browsing share of devices like the iPod touch.
• It’s at least partially responsible for a sharp drop in the growth of netbook sales, which decelerated to -13% year-over-year in the month of April, from +45% in the first quarter of 2010. Huberty thinks the netbook phenomenon may have peaked; she expects tablet sales to overtake netbooks by 2012.

Source: Fortune

Monday morning, Steve Jobs was highlighting the Pulse reader application for iPad during his WWDC 2010 keynote, but that afternoon a complaint from The New York Times prompted Apple to pull the software from the App Store.

The New York Times, like many newspapers, has been trying to find an online business model that works, including experimenting with iPhone and iPad apps, as well as a pay wall that’s expected to launch soon. Now, the newspaper company appears to be sending its lawyers after news aggregators that use its RSS feeds in commercial applications. According to a report from All Things Digital, the Pulse newsreader application for the iPad was pulled from the Apple store after a legal threat from the NYT over unauthorized use of the company’s RSS feeds. According to the email notice that Apple sent the developers of the app, the senior counsel for the newspaper said:

The Pulse News Reader app makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.

The newspaper’s lawyer also noted in his email that the Pulse app includes the New York Times feed when a user downloads the app, and that the newspaper’s feed is “prominently featured in the screen shots used to sell the app on iTunes.”

Ironically, the removal of the app came on the same day that Pulse was praised by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his keynote presentation at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The app was even written about positively by the New York Times itself, in a blog post that highlighted how easy Pulse was to use for browsing multiple news sources, and how the fact that it was a paid app should give media organizations hope that readers might pay for content on the iPad and other such devices.

It’s not clear why the New York Times decided to target the Pulse app, however, apart from the fact that it is (or was, until it was pulled) one of the most popular paid apps on the iPad. There are dozens of applications and services that do fundamentally the same thing as the news-reading app does, by pulling in the RSS feeds of media sites such as the New York Times — and many of them are paid applications, just as Pulse is. There are also many websites, including Yahoo and Google’s customized homepages, that allow users to embed RSS feeds from other sites.

What may have contributed to the complaint is that Pulse also has a view that shows the newspaper’s website inside a Pulse frame. Although there is no obvious advertising in the app, such framing of a site’s content has led to legal challenges against news aggregators in the past, including a high-profile case launched in 1997 by the Washington Post, CNN, Reuters and a number of other media entities against a site called TotalNews, which embedded news content from other outlets inside a frame.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): What We Can Learn From The Guardian’s New Open Platform

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user bloomsberries

---

Pulse News Reader -- a news aggregating app for the iPad -- got itself the ultimate stamp of approval yesterday by being featured in Steve Jobs' keynote speech. A few hours later, however, Apple had removed the application from its App Store, following a complaint by the New York Times that it was infringing on its rights. Although Pulse collates publicly available RSS feeds, the fact it costs $4 a pop is being interpreted as a "commercial use" of those feeds, and therefore a violation of the New York Times and Boston Globe's Terms of Use. Its makers have said they'll be getting in touch with Apple and stripping out the offending content, but it's certainly a head scratcher of a decision by the news company. We wonder if this signals the start of a crusade against all paid RSS readers or if Pulse has something peculiarly intolerable about it. Visit the source link to read the complaint in full.

Continue reading iPad Pulse Reader app goes from keynote hero to App Store zero thanks to NYT

iPad Pulse Reader app goes from keynote hero to App Store zero thanks to NYT originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  All Things Digital  | Email this | Comments

Kara Swisher has a story this morning about an RSS aggregator for the iPad that was first praised in a Steve Jobs keynote and then, later the same day, booted from Apple's store.

Apparently the NY Times played a role. "Apple informed the [authors] that Pulse was being pulled from the App Store, after it received a written notice that '[the Times] believes your application named Pulse News Reader infringes The New York Times Company's rights.'"

Swisher says: "Pulse is little more than a really well-designed RSS reader."

I'm both close to the Times and to RSS, so I'd love to get to the bottom of the concern here. Swisher believes the app is doing nothing out of the ordinary with information available in the Times' publicly-available feeds.

This is a case where the readers of Scripting News may be able to help sort this out. Do you have a copy of the Pulse app? If so, can you make any sense out of this situation? Please advise.

New York Times Gets Pulse Removed From App Store —

Very weird: the Times objected to a feed reader — which had just been mentioned by Jobs during the keynote as an example of a great iPad app — including the Times’s RSS feeds in its default subscriptions.

Mute the Stream —

Mute the Stream is a post from Chris Pirillo

If you’re going to call in to the live show, you have to mute the stream on your end. I cannot hear you very well if you have my voice echoing over the line louder than what your own voice is.

Thanks, Kevin, for capturing this video outtake.

• Live Recording Outtakes are the Best
• Ustream Viewer Beta for Android
• Add Video Into Your Social Media Marketing Plan
• This is Madness
• The Chris Pirillo Live iPad App
• Embed My Live Stream and Chat on Your Windows Desktop
• Live Video iPhone
• High Quality Live Video Streaming Now Available
• What Does the Community Want From Video?
• How to Take Live Skype Calls

iOS: Apple Unveils New Tricks for Background, Video & Audio Apps —

Apple is showing off its iOS 4 all week in San Francisco and this evening one session will demonstrate some new audio and video capabilities that developers can incorporate into their apps.

Smart backgrounding and customization are the name of the game. Developer and former Apple employee Dan Burcaw will go on stage to show off the forthcoming version of his Tour de France app and below are some highlights.

Sponsor

Burcaw says that app backgrounding isn't just the capability to run processes indefinitely, Apple has built effective APIs to efficiently enable the most common features that will run in the background. His app, for example, will show live streaming video of the big bike race. Users will be able to move the app to the background and switch to hearing audio alone. Switch the app back to the foreground and the video feed will resume live again. When audio is running in the background, users will still have access to volume and pause control.

The OS even provides a way to run VOIP in the background.

Controllers will be far more customizable than ever before. Previous versions of the OS have required developers to use Apple's audio and video players as they came from the company. Now developers can fully customize the controls and play video within any boundary box they define. Burcaw is building a video controller, for example, that lets the viewer scrub to a point in the video based not on time but the slope of the race course. That sounds like a whole lot of fun.

These are just a few of the new capabilities we'll soon start seeing in iPhone and iPad apps. "I hear people say all the time that there are restrictions on the platform," Burcaw told us. "There are things you can't do, but those things are far fewer today than yesterday."

Discuss

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced a number of improvements to the iPhone on-stage today at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco — improvements that should help the iPhone fend off competing smartphone. But a number of the rumors about what Jobs might share today turned out to be wrong.

Even more than past WWDC keynotes, today’s event was really all about the iPhone. It’s possible that Apple may have other news up its sleeve for later in the conference. However, since this morning’s session was the only event open to the press, it’s more likely that any big, unconfirmed rumors either aren’t happening, or are being saved up for an Apple event this fall or later.

Here’s a list of some things Jobs didn’t talk about today:

• Mac Mini and MacBook Air — Some of Apple’s non-iPhone, non-iPad products feel like they’re due for a refresh, but no updates were announced today.
• Apple TV — That’s also true for Apple’s device for watching iTunes TV shows and movies on your television, a device that Apple has admitted is “a hobby.”
• Cloud music — Apple acquired music startup Lala last year, and has been expected to announce its own streaming music service using Lala technology. It seems likely that some kind of announcement will come soon, but it didn’t arrive today.
• Magic Trackpad — There were rumors that Apple might unveil a new touchscreen device that plugs into the iPhone called the Magic Trackpad, spurred by the fact that Apple trademarked the Magic Trackpad name. Those rumors were wrong.

Filed under: iWork, iPhone

Looking for more good news on the iPhone 4 front? Our eagle-eyed tipster iJcaP points out something that MacRumors also noted: on the iPhone 4 features page for Mail, a screenshot at the bottom lets a fairly large cat out of the bag. The picture shows an option to open a Keynote file... in Keynote. That, of course, implies a version of the iWork suite for the iPhone -- currently only available for the iPad.

Screenshot mixup, or true vision of the future? Sure would be another nice thing to have for the iOS 4 launch and iPhone 4 availability, dontcha think?

TUAWIs the iWork suite en route to iPhone? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference today Steve Jobs specifically highlighted iOS4's support for the enterprise. "I wanted to hit for a moment on the enterprise integration - our customers are thrilled," Jobs said. He announced support for multiple Exchange accounts and support for Exchange Server 2010, as well as improved data protection, device management, and VPN support.

Sponsor

Four in 10 iPhones are sold to enterprise users and many businesses are planning to support the iPad, so it makes sense for Apple to improve in this area as well. The new features will make the iPhone competitive with Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.

The improved data protection is a welcome enhancement in light of the data security flaw we covered recently. At present, there is no word on whether that specific issue has been patched.

Image via Apple's iPhone enterprise support site.

Discuss

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says iPhone app coming this summer —

At Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference today, Netflix CEO Reed Hasting hit the stage to officially announce that a Netflix iPhone application is coming this summer.

Hastings also mentioned that the Netflix iPad application is the No. 1 most downloaded in entertainment apps. Details were sparse on what the iPhone app will feature, but we can expect the usual: You can search Netflix titles, and manage your queue. Hastings made it clear that users would be able to continue watching video from their last position — which will include the iPad and likely other Netflix viewing devices as well. The app will be free when its released, just like the iPad version.

He also mentioned that the iPhone app will take advantage of Apple’s adaptive bitrate technology to allow it to seamlessly switch between networks — which tells us that it will also work over AT&T’s 3G network. While that’s certainly a nice feature, now that AT&T has moved towards limited bandwidth data plans, many new iPhone owners likely won’t spend too much time enjoying Netflix over 3G.

[Image via Engadget]

Tags: iPhone, WWDC

Companies: Apple, Netflix

People: Reed Hastings

Apple Has Paid $1 Billion To App Developers. (And Other Key Stats) —

Today at the WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage for his keynote address. During it, he gave some key stats about three key pillars of Apple’s recent strategy: the iPad, the App Store, and the new iBooks store.

First, the key iPad stats:

• There have been 2 million iPads sold in 59 days.
• That’s 1 iPad sold every 3 seconds
• It’s in 10 countries now (9 new ones) — and 19 by the end of July
• There are over 8,500 native iPad apps
• These apps have been downloaded over 35 million times
• That’s about 17 apps per iPad

Next some iBooks stats:

• There are over 5 million book downloads in the first 65 days of the iBooks store
• That means each iPad has about 2.5 iBooks on them
• Apple has 5 of the top 6 book U.S. publishers and they say that Apple has taken about 22% of the U.S. eBooks market

App Store:

• There are over 225,000 apps in the App Store now.
• 15,000 apps submitted every week (both new and updates) across 30 languages
• 95% of all apps are approved in 7 days

Jobs also used the stage early on at WWDC to take his first shot at Google. He notes that the developer of Elements for the iPad recently emailed him to let him know that he earned more money in the first day of sales for the iPad than he did in 5 years from Google ads on his periodictable.com site.

Jobs also highlighted something that Apple has begun pushing recently thanks largely to its war with Adobe: HTML5. “We support two platforms at Apple,” Jobs said — HTML5 and the App Store. “Apple’s browsers are in the lead in supporting the HTML5 standard,” Jobs noted.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings got up on stage right after Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2010 conference, which we’re liveblogging here. Guess why he was there: there’s a Netflix app for iPhone on the way, and it’s coming this Summer.

It isn’t much of a surprise. I mean, Netflix already has an (amazing) iPad app, and it started surveying interest for an iPhone app early March 2010, while rumors of its impending launch have been swirling for much longer.

Judging from MobileCrunch writer Greg Kumparak’s comments on the liveblog, the features they’ve mentioned on stage mirror that of the iPad app: full catalog, Instant Queue access, and movies will start playing where you stopped watching even if it was on any other platform than the iPhone OS.

Apple Unveils iPhone 4 for $199, Available June 24th —

Today in San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced the newest iPhone to a packed house in Moscone Center for the Worldwide Developers Conference. The device, dubbed the iPhone 4, features live video chat with a front-facing camera, a thin stainless steel design and 720p HD video capabilities. Predictably, the prices come in at $199 and $299, but storage sizes remained at 16GB and 32GB respectively. Happy Apple fans can pick up a the new device June 24th, and pre-orders start June 15th.

Sponsor

Also among the other impressive new features announced today is a built-in gyroscope, a 5 megapixel camera with flash, a built in iMovie for iPhone video editor, and the iPhone OS4 - now rebranded as iOS4. The new OS will be available June 21st for current iPhone users and for the first time will be a free upgrade for iPod touch users. Not all models will support features like multi-tasking, however. The iPhone 3GS, as expected, has also been dropped to $99, making a very fast smartphone highly accessible at the lowered price point.

Left for the end, in a classic "one more thing" moment, Steve Jobs had a live video chat with Apple designer Jonathan Ive directly from the new iPhone 4. Video chat, known as "Facetime" will only run on WiFi between two iPhone 4s in 2010 but Jobs did note that Apple intends to make Facetime a technology, and an open platform for video chat applications.

Jobs also spent a significant amount of time describing the device's new high-resolution display. In the same screen size as the iPhone 3GS, the newest phone has quadrupled the pixel density to a 960x640 display. This pixel resolution is just 22% smaller than the iPad, which means up-scaling of apps to the larger device will look a lot better.

App developers will be excited to learn of Apple's inclusion of a built-in gyroscope, which is closely ties to the accelerometer. This functionality, which includes 6-axis motion sensing, pitch, roll and yaw control, and rotation about gravity, gives the iPhone impressive control over 3D objects. Personally I am excited to see this technology in the hands of augmented reality developers - this should give the apps a much more accurate picture of the location and positioning of the device in 3D space.

Aesthetically, the device is refresh for Apple, breaking away from the rounded black plastic back for a flush metal design similar to the company's unibody MacBook design. The leaked photos were pretty much right on in terms of design. The sides and back of the phone are flat and comprised of stainless steel and feature new volume buttons, antennae receivers, and a microphone on the top for noise cancellation.

The stainless steel frame is not only a design choice, but Apple has built the antenna for the phone into the frame, moving it outside the previous plastic case. Some had claimed the iPhone was to blame for network woes on AT&T, and this new design is a clear effort by Apple to help with this issue. The new glass and metal design is 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS.

Additionally, Apple engineer Randy Ubillos demoed an iPhone version of Apple's iMovie video editing software. With the combined 5 megapixel camera and 720p video recording ability, iPhone users can create videos on the phone, complete with image effects and themes. The app isn't free, however; Apple is charging users $4.99 to edit movies and photos together on the iPhone.

So what will this latest device do for the mobile web? Apple's ad network, iAds, which will activate beginning in July, will likely become a large player in the mobile advertising industry because the design allows users to remain within applications while viewing ads. According to Apple, $60 million has already been committed to the platform by advertisers for the second half of the year - which they estimate to be nearly half of the market in that period.

Images courtesy of Engadget.com

Discuss