The Next Web |  |
- One Million Samsung Galaxy S Units Shipped In The US
- Hey baby, wanna marry me? (only 200,000 rupees!)
- Turn yourself into a total trending topic tycoon with TrendTopic.
- Confessions of a semi-reluctant iPhone buyer
- Scammy “Phone Tracker” Apps In Apple App Store
- Does Twitter need an ‘Edit Tweet’ button?
- 35 Life Hacks You Should Know
- Where Are All the Location Web Apps?
| One Million Samsung Galaxy S Units Shipped In The US Posted: 30 Aug 2010 01:17 AM PDT
Samsung has heavily marketed the Galaxy S; online, in print and via television adverts. Samsung aimed straight for the jugular with its newspaper ads, poking fun at Apple and its iPhone 4 antennagate issue. One thing to note is that units shipped does not equate to devices sold. What it does show that there is increased demand and sales can’t be far behind, especially as it makes its way to more carriers in the US. The Galaxy S went on sale on July 15th, available on both AT&T and T-Mobile networks, soon to be available on Verizon Wireless, U.S Cellular and Cellular South later this year. Full press release below:
Original title and link for this post: One Million Samsung Galaxy S Units Shipped In The US |
| Hey baby, wanna marry me? (only 200,000 rupees!) Posted: 30 Aug 2010 12:52 AM PDT
In the past 30 days I received 167,000 spam messages. Fortunately all of those messages got caught by Gmail before being handed off to MobileMe which catches another 30 or so messages a day. Apart from that about 10 messages end up in my inbox. Today I got this spam message which I just loved. The idea of some company somewhere trying to sell a wedding via spam? I mean, how insane can you get? I get the Viagra offerings and I’m sure some people buy those. But a wedding? Can you imagine telling your friends “Yeah, I got a spam message for a really cheap wedding and decided to go for it”. But then I started thinking: that would actually be pretty funny. And at only 200,000 rupees a pretty good deal! Not sure about the romantic part but who cares about that. It is cheap! So, without further ado: Hey Tessa, wanna marry me for 200,000 rupees? Just remember, it will ‘Save your Time and Money and completely remove your stress’ and ‘Celebrating Weddings haven’t been so Easy !!!!!’.
Original title and link for this post: Hey baby, wanna marry me? (only 200,000 rupees!) |
| Turn yourself into a total trending topic tycoon with TrendTopic. Posted: 29 Aug 2010 03:33 PM PDT
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| Confessions of a semi-reluctant iPhone buyer Posted: 29 Aug 2010 03:05 PM PDT
I switched from a “regular” cell phone to a Blackberry 7130e about five years ago. Oh it was glorious and amazing. I could get email everywhere. I could tether it to my laptop and have Internet access whenever I needed it (WiFi everywhere was still a dream back then remember). I got used to the slim keyboard style (the kind that is still used on the Pearl), but the EVDO speeds were pretty amazing for the time. A couple years ago I had grown weary of the 7130 and its wee keyboard (you think your iPhone makes strange word guesses, try smart type sometime), so I switched to a Curve. This was all just before the iPhone was released in Canada. I was with Telus at the time (and still am in fact) and with a year left on my contract, there was no way to swing canceling my Telus contract, switching to Rogers, and buying a new phone. Just wasn’t going to happen. Also I didn’t think that the iPhone at the time was that great an email device (this is what I used my Blackberry for a lot). While I thought the iPhone was (and is) a revolutionary device, I didn’t think it was for me. At least not yet. Another year passes and Telus is offering the iPhone, by this time I wanted one. My girlfriend (now wife) had a iPhone 3G and I found that browsing and just using the thing was great. Use my Blackberry for checking out websites? Yeah, I’d rather not thank you. Oh and the apps. The apps on the iPhone were so much cooler than my Blackberry. Yeah, I tried the Storm, and what a terrible phone that it was. I never tried the Storm 2 or the Torch, but all things point to RIM just not being able to get the whole touch thing down. Well since I was only a year into my contract with Telus I wasn’t eligible to get an iPhone at the promo pricing. I tried. I really tried. Still I am, at heart, frugal so I couldn’t justify getting a new phone “just because it was cool”. Then the iPhone 4 comes out. Wow, now that’s an amazing device. I’d had my iPad for several months by then and had finally groked the whole iOS thing. Everything made sense and worked. Oh and the apps … the apps were just as glorious as I had hoped. After checking if I could switch to my wife’s Fido plan and save us some money (nope, no more family plans there) checked Telus and (be still my heart) I qualified for the promotional pricing. My wife knew I wanted an iPhone very badly by this point, so she and my mother-in-law planned to give one to me for my birthday (which is in November, btw) and that I should just get one sooner rather than later. So I did. So, what happened? How did I go from “nope, my Blackberry is awesome and I don’t think I’d like an iPhone” to “I really want an iPhone and I know it will be a great device for me”? It’s all in the use case. First, I don’t talk on the phone very much. I email, I text, I check maps, talking not so much. In fact when I do have to talk on the phone I prefer to use my Bluetooth headset. While email on the Blackberry might still be better than on the iPhone , the more used an iPhone, the more I liked it. Looking at the smaller, cramped screen on my Blackberry was just painful after using the real browser on the iPhone. The thing is, it’s not that I was sucked in by Apple per se, but the larger form factor, the touch screen, the resolution of the screen, and the entire UI. I had tried the Sony Ericsson X10 mini and the only think I didn’t like about it was the size. It was just too small. If I had been sent the larger Xperia, then I probably would have loved it. So it isn’t iOS, it’s how the device works. It’s how fast and easily I can do something. So, yes, I poo-pooed the iPhone at first. So I thought that, while it was going to change everything from the moment it came out (it did), that the device wasn’t quite there yet (I still maintain that it wasn’t). So, I eventually changed my mind and realized that an iPhone was more than hype, even if it might not be the best phone in the world, and got one. So what that all the computers and phones (plus iPad) in my house are Apple devices. I guess it turns out that I just like the way they work, look, and get things done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more apps to download for my new phone. Original title and link for this post: Confessions of a semi-reluctant iPhone buyer |
| Scammy “Phone Tracker” Apps In Apple App Store Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:24 AM PDT
Basically, what the apps do is this: while you’re standing right next to a friend, you launch the app and then tell them, “tell me you cell phone number” (of course that’s if you don’t already know it) and then you enter that number into the app, and through “use of special government technology that has now gone public” the app “magically” shows your friend’s location on a map in the app. Apparently, this is supposed to actually fool someone into thinking that this app is “tracking” them, and that anyone can do that. Of course, that is complete nonsense – what the app is doing is using the location of the iOS device it on and just showing your friend – that is standing right next to you – the location of your own device. Now, a couple of these apps are in the “Entertainment” category of the App Store, and all of them do say, “For entertainment purposes only.” While the “a Phone Tracker Spy” is listed in the “Entertainment” section and says that is is “for entertainment purposes only” right at the top of its app description, the two “tracker” apps by Core Engine Apps / Jasmine Lee don’t say this until you click on the “More” button on the info section of the app page (the message is at the very bottom). More disturbing (and scammy), however, is the Core Engine Apps’ “A Phone Tracker”, which also has the “for entertainment purposes only” disclaimer, is actually listed in the “Utilities” section of the App Store. All of these apps (and these are just three that we found, there could be others) are being sold for $0.99, so especially “A Phone Tracker” is downright false advertising, and a number of reviewers on all of the apps have used the word “scam” to describe these apps. How Apple let “A Phone Tracker” be included in the “Utilities” section of the App Store is a serious question, and we’ve emailed them for comment. In the meantime, unless you fully get the joke and are willing to throw down a dollar to play it on your friends, do help us spread the word that these are otherwise very scammy apps. We bit the bullet and reluctantly gave the developer of “A Phone Tracker” our $0.99 so that we could show you exactly how these apps work in the video below – also, see the reviews for the “a Phone Tracker Spy” below the video:
Original title and link for this post: Scammy “Phone Tracker” Apps In Apple App Store |
| Does Twitter need an ‘Edit Tweet’ button? Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:07 AM PDT
There’s no doubt that such a function would be useful. Whether it’s a simple typo or something potentially libellous, most of us will have regretted a tweet the minute it’s sent at some time. That said, part of the appeal of Twitter is its real-time, ’stream of consciousness’ nature. Having the ability to go back and edit what you’ve said could ruin the fun. Many a good story has come from someone who has tweeted too much accidentally. That said, those people have always had the option to delete their tweets, so an edit function wouldn’t be that much of a leap. It would be sensible if there were some limitations in place. Maybe users could only edit their latest tweet for, say, ten minutes after initial publication. That would certainly be useful for perfectionists who spot a typo and want to change it quickly, or for people who mis-type a URL. Would it be technically possible? Twitter already has the ability to undo retweets, and innovations like adding custom metadata to tweets are on the way. Bolting on an ‘edit’ function must surely be feasible. (Edit: a commenter below disagrees. We’d love to hear the thoughts of more people with a deep technical understanding of Twitter on this). So Twitter, how about it? Original title and link for this post: Does Twitter need an ‘Edit Tweet’ button? |
| Posted: 29 Aug 2010 07:09 AM PDT |
| Where Are All the Location Web Apps? Posted: 28 Aug 2010 03:37 PM PDT
It’s been a year since iPhone added geolocation to its browser. It’s also now available in Android and in many desktop browsers. The standard provides a device’s location to any website through a couple lines of JavaScript. So, why do so few take advantage of data that important?
In the hoopla over the Facebook Places launch, it’s easy to miss that Places went live on the mobile web first, then in the iPhone app. It is not yet part of the native Android, Blackberry or Palm apps. But any browser with geolocation? Yep.
Still, there are numerous sites that should really be incorporating location into their websites, starting with the check-in darlings Gowalla and Foursquare. Neither of their mobile sites ask for the user’s location. In fact, Gowalla doesn’t even let you check-in from the web. Compare these to web-only Burbn, which beat both Foursquare and Gowalla in the geolocation time trials. The Starbucks website still requires typing an address or postal code to find a coffee shop, the local search archetype. The company has an iPhone app that looks up based on your location, but hasn’t added the few lines necessary to do the same in any web browser. One reason is that there aren’t many examples of how this interaction should take place. Twitter provides one for adding location context, but how about using your location for a search? One good approach comes from perhaps an unlikely place: MapQuest.
The mapping granddaddy’s mobile site (which requires you access it via a mobile phone) offers to use your current location when you click into an input field. From there, you can get get directions or, yes, find coffee shops. Though the ability to use someone’s location (with permission) is fairly ubiquitous, sites that take advantage of it are not. There is plenty of interest in adding the same functionality to native apps, which are more difficult to build and require longer lead times. Is the cool factor really enough to ignore perhaps the most important web standard in some time? If not, then where are all the location web apps? Original title and link for this post: Where Are All the Location Web Apps? |
TNW Quick Hit
There are some who have used it well, of course. Twitter famously 
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