The Next Web |  |
- Facebook Amends Its Monthly Active User Algorithm
- Alcatel-Lucent acquires OpenPlug to speed up mobile development for carriers
- ASA Moves To Regulate Twitter And Facebook Marketing
- HD Voice Calls Go Nationwide in the UK with Orange (Updated with sound test)
- The World’s First “Infinite USB Memory” Available for Pre-order
- Apple-only streaming isn’t foolish; it’s a load test for streaming iTunes.
- So Apple’s live streaming to everyone tomorrow…except Windows and Linux users.
- Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social
- Clash of the Blogosphere Titans
- Digg Sends Reddit 250,000 Hits And 9,000 New Users In A Day
- TNW Mobile Review : The BlackBerry Torch 9800
- The Official Post From Digg Concerning Their New CEO
- Amazing time-waster of the day? Swarmation.
- Official Pictures Of The T-Mobile G2 Surface
- 34% of people believe all websites are dangerous.
- Hootsuite needs your lingua franca: Help with crowd-sourced translation of Hootsuite
- webOS 2.0 APIs, beta SDK and features surface
- Beware: fake Tweetdeck “download” tweets hide software trojan
- This Is Digg’s New CEO: Matt Williams
- No More Mark, Hurd Leaving News Corp. Board
| Facebook Amends Its Monthly Active User Algorithm Posted: 01 Sep 2010 03:23 AM PDT
Until recently, Facebook’s algorithm would incorporate user likes and comments, inflating the number of monthly active users of an app, even if they weren’t actively using it. As of last Friday, Facebook has changed the way it counts active users, dismissing likes and comments on stream content published by applications. Whilst some apps will already reflect the change, Facebook says that re-calculations are still in progress meaning some apps will still report older statistics. As InsideFacebook reports, mobile apps will be the most affected because their very nature is to help generate new content that gets a lot of likes, shares and comments. It will also give us a clearer view on just how many real active users there are of the official Facebook for iPhone app, as well as the KIN and the Windows Phone 7 apps. It’s a good move by Facebook but one that should have been in place from the start. Original title and link for this post: Facebook Amends Its Monthly Active User Algorithm     |
| Alcatel-Lucent acquires OpenPlug to speed up mobile development for carriers Posted: 01 Sep 2010 02:35 AM PDT
Southern France based OpenPlug allows developers to build an app once using its SDK based on Adobe’s Flex Builder, and then the code is compiled to run a natively on iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux. OpenPlug is Alcatel-Lucent’s second acquisition in the developer space in the last three months, following its purchase of API-focused site ProgrammableWeb. “OpenPlug takes into consideration the components of the device – you’ll notice that UI interfaces are different – there is no reason the features shouldn’t be different,” said Scott Monson, Alcatel-Lucent’s Director of Application Services, in an interview with TNW. Alcatel-Lucent has received many requests from its customers to offer more app building services said Monson. “People haven’t expected this from telcos [such as Alcatel-Lucent] to build out the app ecosystem,” Monson noted. Alcatel-Lucent plans to use OpenPlug to reach beyond mobile handsets into other devices as well; ”We are looking at other platforms that will make a difference, could mean a connected car, any kind of device or platform,” said Monson. Additionally, Alcatel-Lucent will also promote OpenPlug as a way to bring smartphone-like functionality to feature phones and other lower-cost handsets. “In the short term the service will continue to use the OpenPlug brand,” said Monson, though OpenPlug will also be included in Alcatel-Lucent’s Developer Platform and Open API Service. AnalysisIt’s good to see a major telecommunications equipment and services provider making a serious play (with at least two acquisitions Alcatel-Lucent is certainly serious about this) as an app developer service/platform. Of course, Alcatel-Lucent isn’t the only telco thinking about and/or doing this, but it seems to be on a reasonable path. While we haven’t used OpenPlug ourselves, if it works as advertised there certainly is a lot of potential when you combine Alcatel-Lucent’s network expertise and the community around ProgrammableWeb. That said, its doubtful that Alcatel-Lucent will focus beyond the enterprise/carrier level, so these moves will probably have little effect on independent developers and startups. Still, hard to fault Alcatel-Lucent’s intent to get into the app ecosystem, where there will most likely be tremendous growth for years to come. Original title and link for this post: Alcatel-Lucent acquires OpenPlug to speed up mobile development for carriers    |
| ASA Moves To Regulate Twitter And Facebook Marketing Posted: 01 Sep 2010 02:12 AM PDT
The Guardian reports that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has extended its remit in a response to more than 4,500 complaints it received regarding online adverts, an area it was unable to regulate previously. The new rules will go live as of March 1st next year, allowing the ASA to call for the removal of paid links which linked to banned online adverts, going as far as replacing an advertisers ad with its own to demonstrate their refusal to comply with the agency’s rulings. These rulings will be in addition to its continued regulation of paid adverts online. To cover the cost of its extended remit, Google has contributed £200,000 to the ASA and the agency will continue to take a 0.1% levy from paid adverts. Content creators needn’t worry that they will feel the heavy breath of the ASA on their necks when it comes to monetizing their content, the agency will be focusing on adverts that sell products, rather than journalistic or editorial content. This will, in the ASA’s eyes “protect the right to freedom of speech online” but regulations will apply to “all sectors and all businesses and organisations regardless of size”. The move will hopefully reduce the number of spam messages sent via Twitter and Facebook, at least in the UK. By targeting the advertising companies directly, the ASA will hopefully ad another layer of protection to young and vulnerable people online. Original title and link for this post: ASA Moves To Regulate Twitter And Facebook Marketing    |
| HD Voice Calls Go Nationwide in the UK with Orange (Updated with sound test) Posted: 01 Sep 2010 12:54 AM PDT
The technology uses the AMR-WB codec and is expected to be adopted by other carriers shortly. William Webb (Head of research and development at Ofcom) says that it is “relatively easy for an operator to introduce—it’s just a software upgrade.” It’s not all good news however. Unfortunately, the new technology does not address the problems associated with mobile phone reception – so iPhone users don’t get your hopes up – and it will require most users to purchase a new handset. That said, Orange is offering the service free to existing customers, lets hope competitors do the same cough-cough-O2-cough-cough. Update: Just came upon this video from the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones comparing an HD phone call to a standard phone, the difference is absolutely remarkable. If the video below isn’t working for you, watch it here. via bbc.co.uk Original title and link for this post: HD Voice Calls Go Nationwide in the UK with Orange (Updated with sound test)    |
| The World’s First “Infinite USB Memory” Available for Pre-order Posted: 01 Sep 2010 12:33 AM PDT
Originally unveiled at CES in January, the IUM is set to launch on March 1. Preordering is available and is, according to CEO Ahmad Zahran, building quite a demand, "After five minutes we started to get sales. This happened at 1am … and since then we've got more than I expected." Going for a little under US$ 130, some are finding some of the features to be quite bland, (sharing between PCs and the like), but the reason I would part with my money is for the support this little gadget has with gaming consoles such as the XBOX 360 and PS3. Some other features include the capability to stream content directly to an HDTV or Blu-ray player. If you really want to understand how it works and what you can do with it check out this video the marketing people from Infinitec prepared: The more I think about the IUM, the more I think, “What are the security implications of such a device?”, or “You could probably send someone a gift laptop with the hard drive pre-shared using IUM and if it’s good software, the user won’t realize a thing”. But hey, it’s probably just my skeleton-riddled closet that’s doing the talking. I mean, does anyone really keep confidential data on their laptops? Original title and link for this post: The World’s First “Infinite USB Memory” Available for Pre-order    |
| Apple-only streaming isn’t foolish; it’s a load test for streaming iTunes. Posted: 31 Aug 2010 11:25 PM PDT
Not a chance. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Apple over the years, it’s that “one more thing” is usually the best part of any announcement. According to our own thoughts, and backed up by an anonymous source over at Cult of Mac, the latest “one more thing” could be one of the best ever:
Apple’s decision to stream the event is a real-world load test on its recently acquired datacenter. It is, in one fell swoop, the single best way for Apple to provide a real-world test for upcoming features, such as the much-desired streaming iTunes. So while we will no doubt see new products at today’s event, Apple’s true intentions behind the Apple-only stream will almost certainly be revealed as well. Just wait for the “one more thing”. Original title and link for this post: Apple-only streaming isn’t foolish; it’s a load test for streaming iTunes.    |
| So Apple’s live streaming to everyone tomorrow…except Windows and Linux users. Posted: 31 Aug 2010 05:16 PM PDT
That said, we do welcome Windows and Linux users to keep track of our @TNWapple twitter account where we’ll be sending out regular updates throughout the event. See, according to Apple you need to be on “either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad.” No mention of any Windows or Linux run device whatsoever. Surely Apple hasn’t stooped this low… Don’t just take our word for it, see for yourself. Genuine mistake or Apple blatantly looking to exclude anyone that can’t afford a mac? Update: We’ve been reliably informed that Apple will be using their own streaming protocol which isn’t supported by any other OS. It’s never Apple’s fault is it. Original title and link for this post: So Apple’s live streaming to everyone tomorrow…except Windows and Linux users.    |
| Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social Posted: 31 Aug 2010 04:12 PM PDT
Both services are out to create a landing page for every local business in the world. Both services allow local merchants to "claim" their pages, giving the merchant some editorial control over content on the page. And both services no doubt expect to grab a chunk of what is projected to be a $32B digital, local advertising market by 2013 by claiming the middleman position between the merchant and the end user. But where the two services break from each other – and in a non-trivial way – is in their respective distribution strategies. Google relies on Search. Facebook relies on Social. And this is where things start to get interesting. Whichever service is able to attract the most consumers will likely attract the most local merchant ad dollars. The merchants will follow the users. Let's take a look at how consumers are exposed to merchant pages on Google Places and Facebook Places respectively. On Google, it's via the Google Search box. If I search for something with a geographic component, say "San Francisco Taquerias," Google shows me a massive seven pack of their own Google Places results, before showing any organic results. As queries with local intent are estimated to make up roughly 20% of all queries, and almost everybody clicks on one of the top three results, this aggressive placement of their own Places pages on top of the search results is no doubt driving massive traffic to merchant pages. Some back of the envelope analysis tells me this: 6,500,000,000 total queries per month * 20% (local intent) * 90% (to seven pack) = 1.17B local merchant referrals per month. Massive. Now, let's look at Facebook Places. Facebook users are exposed to Facebook Places pages via one of three ways; A) Search; B) When a friend's checkin shows up in their newsfeed; or C) Via the Facebook Places feature on the Facebook iPhone app or touch.facebook.com. Facebook Places is a brand new service (see our coverage here, here, and here) that allows people to "check in" to local businesses, and share those locations with their friends. Put another way, Facebook Places is a delivery engine for person to person local merchant recommendations. Every check in represents an opportunity for a local business to go rocketing through Facebook's interconnected social graphs via comments and likes. If this service takes off, it could result in an awful lot of exposure – via trusted sources – for local businesses. While Facebook hasn't yet shared specific numbers around adoption of the Facebook Features, we do know this: social networking is overtaking search in terms of usage in some markets. The Value of a Click From a local merchant's perspective, not all referrals are created equal. In order from most valuable to least is: - A first time customer who discovers your business and becomes a repeat customer Search traffic has proven to be highly actionable and highly valuable. If I am searching on Google for a "San Francisco Taquerias," I am likely quite ready to go eat some tacos. Social's correlation with intention is less clear. If I am browsing my Facebook feed and see that my friend just want to El Farolito Taqueria, it is less likely that I am actively looking for a Taqueria recommendation. However, depending on the friend, it is possible that I might make a mental note to check the place out at some point. Let's take a deeper dive into some of the use cases around consumer behavior and local search. The Use Cases Here are some sample local search use cases from the consumer's perspective along with our thoughts as to who has the edge as of today.
But the wild card here is the lucrative discovery / recommendation use case. At the end of the day, this is what matters most to local merchants – finding first time customers, and turning them into lifetime repeat customers. And if Facebook can prove that local merchant recommendations delivered friend to friend via social check-in can beat search based research, they have a fighting chance to win the dominant share of local merchant ad dollars. Social and Mobile are Rising Tides When two companies are competing head to head with similar products and similar strategies – e.g. Foursquare vs Gowalla – whoever executes better will likely win. But when two companies are betting on entirely different distribution channels… well, this would seem to portend larger industry ramifications. Facebook has plenty of question marks ahead of it as it enters the local search market. Are people going to check in at all given privacy and social graph issues? Do friend to friend recommendations beat expert recommendations? Are check-ins worthy of showing up in the newsfeed or will they be considered just noise? But we do know this. Traffic to social networking sites is growing more quickly than traffic to search engines. And mobile is emerging as a significant point of control. Facebook owns social, and is doing a strong job with mobile. Google exerts influence over the fastest growing mobile operating system (Android), and also has one of the largest mobile app (Maps). And what about Yelp? My personal opinion is that the Google / Yelp showdown that we've all been following recently may soon become a Google / Facebook showdown. And that whoever snags Yelp might have a big leg up (those new Facebook venue pages would look awfully strong with some Yelp reviews on them and would help them rank nicely in Google). There are lots of moving parts at play in the face off between Google Places and Facebook Places. Some are feature specific, some are company specific, and some are occurring at a macro, industry level. It will be fascinating to see how things play out. Original title and link for this post: Google Places vs Facebook Places: It's Search vs. Social    |
| Clash of the Blogosphere Titans Posted: 31 Aug 2010 04:06 PM PDT Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald’s relentless criticism of The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg…To illustrate the effect of media criticism in a Web 2.0/3.0 age, one merely has to compare Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg’s defensive stance toward his critics today to when he was penning pieces for the New Yorker earlier this decade. In 2002, the journalist had written two long articles for the New Yorker that many critics now label as being among the loudest drumbeats for the Iraq invasion. In the wake of this reporting, Goldberg received an Oversea’s Press Award and a prestigious National Magazine Award. In the run-up to the invasion he was invited on multiple cable news shows where the hosts, for the most part, treated him with reverential respect as he made his case for war. Back then, Daily Kos — one of the leading anti-war blogs — was still in its infancy, having just launched that year. Many Americans didn’t know what a blog was (much less read any) and it was still two years away from the netroots’ rise to prominence during the 2004 elections. Compare this to the series of blog posts he’s written recently after the publication of an Atlantic article titled “The Point of No Return,” in which he asserts that Iran is surely pursuing the manufacturing of nuclear weapons and that Israel, in response to this threat, may bomb the country within the next year. The posts appear on his Atlantic-hosted blog and adopt a defensive crouch against the deluge of extremely critical blog posts that have appeared in response to his article. Among his critics, none is louder or more relentless than Salon columnist/blogger Glenn Greenwald. On a whim, I copy and pasted all his columns on Goldberg into a single Word document and found that Greenwald has devoted over 10,000 words to addressing the Atlantic writer. Much of his criticism juxtaposes claims in Goldberg’s 2002 writing to later revelations and the journalist’s recent claims. For instance, the Salon blogger has pointed out more than once a 2002 Slate piece in which Goldberg argues that “people with limited experience in the Middle East” reach “the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East.” Any objective reader would conclude that in hindsight this quote could be used as a cudgel to Goldberg’s claims to Middle East expertise. Another Goldberg quote Greenwald and others turn to comes from one of his New Yorker pieces, where he points out that after a 1981 Israeli bombing attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein “rebuilt, redoubled his efforts” to turn his country into a nuclear power. In the recent Atlantic piece, he says the exact opposite, arguing that the bombing “[halted]– forever, as it turned out — Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.” Critics alleged that these two counter claims served Goldberg’s arguments at the time of publication. In 2002, he wanted to convince readers that Hussein had nuclear weapons, necessitating an attack. In 2010, it’s that an Israeli bombing of a Muslim country would halt its nuclear ambitions. Greenwald’s attacks have not gone unnoticed. To date, Goldberg has posted more than a half dozen responses to the Salon blogger, and when Goldberg recently appeared on NPR’s On Point a caller cited Greenwald when asking a question. Rather than answering the listener’s question, he claimed erroneously that Greenwald had retracted his criticism, a claim that was undeniably false (and one that Greenwald was quick to point out). Given all this back-and-forth public discussion between the two, I was surprised when Goldberg denied my request for an interview for this piece, saying that he was “not interested in talking about Glenn Greenwald anymore.” But one may wonder why the Salon blogger has spent so much time with his sights on a single writer. Is this some kind of obsessive feud that keeps Greenwald relentlessly coming back to the same subject time and again? “I don't think that just because someone is wrong about something that they should forever have their credibility impaired,” he told me in a phone interview. “But I think there are two things that distinguish this case. One is the consequentiality of it and the centrality he played. It wasn't like he was just kind of wrong about something, he was one of the leading people validating the war. The thing that happened in the Iraq War is that obviously the right got behind it because the people on the right — the leaders on the right — were clearly behind it. But in order to make it a majoritarian movement, they had to get centrists and liberals behind it. So they needed liberal validators … There's probably nobody that you can compare in influence to getting Democrats and liberals to support the war than Jeffrey Goldberg. It wasn't just that he was for the war, he was using his status as a reporter to feed lies. I mean he didn't just write one New Yorker piece but a second one too, and he was all over the television with this stuff saying that Saddam had a very active nuclear program and most importantly that Saddam had an enthusiastic alliance with al-Qaeda.”
One could argue that Goldberg responding to his critics indicates he’s open to dialog about his reporting, but reviewing all his blog posts on the matter, I and others have concluded that he rarely responds to the actual charges being made. In a recent post he said that the Salon blogger is “incapable of reason; incapable of fairness; incapable of understanding complexity,” and that his “friends in journalism who have been targets of his attacks warned me against trying to reason with him.” This hasn’t escaped Greenwald’s notice. “[Goldberg's responses] are all substance free,” he told me. “It's funny. It's almost like his responses are three or four years behind. When I first started writing about criticizing media figures — establishment media figures — that was very much the reaction. It was a very lame sort of not-really-attentive response, just dismissive or plain mockery. Like, ‘I don't have to respond because in my world he's nobody and I'm somebody so the most I'm going to do is be derisive about this.’ That's a journalist/blogger cliché from 2005, and most journalists know they can no longer get away with it. He's living in a world where he thinks it doesn't affect his reputation. Among his friends it doesn't. I'm sure he calls [TIME writer] Joe Klein or whoever else I've criticized and he's like ‘he's an asshole and a prick, don't worry about that.’ But I guarantee you that there are a lot more people reading the stuff I write than the stuff he writes, in terms of sheer number. And the level of impact that that kind of level of critique has is infinitely greater than it was three years ago. So I'm sure he tells himself and convinces himself that it doesn't actually matter but it does. And it's hurting his credibility.” According to Compete, Salon’s online readership is far above The Alantic’s (though this doesn’t take into account the latter’s print readership), and Greenwald is regularly cited in the New York Times, invited onto cable news and radio shows, and even recently appeared on a panel for ABC’s This Week. He has also written a New York Times bestseller. It would be hard to deny that the blogger has an equally large platform with which to take on Goldberg. Peter Hart, an activism director for the media watchdog group FAIR, told me that it’s partly this large following that enables Greenwald to elicit responses from Goldberg, but it’s also the Salon blogger’s tendency to leave no stone unturned. “You end up with people who are excellent media critics, like Greenwald, who because of their platform are really able to get under the skin of people like Joe Klein and Jeffrey Goldberg in a way that I don't think anyone else can,” he said. “I think it's in part because Greenwald is so relentless. He has the ability to stay on something and write it and rewrite it. And that is part of the conversation that I think really frustrates journalists, and in particular pundit journalists.” But like Greenwald, Hart doesn’t believe that Goldberg is actually taking the time to assess his own journalism or even defend it. “In this case there is no substantive response,” he said. “To go on [NPR] and say that Glenn Greenwald is a humor columnist — well, that's saying you're not taking this seriously and you have no response to it. To say that a caller who is basically repeating the criticism that has been articulated by Glenn Greenwald and people like him is misreading the article is false. So I think that's their default reaction. We've always likened this – it's an analogy that I think that works – to doctors doing surgery. And the patient — in this case the readers — are not supposed to sit up and offer tips and criticisms of how the doctor is behaving. That's their conception of how journalism should work.” But if you’re not going to defend your work, why reply at all? Hart was at a loss when I asked this question. “The smartest PR advice any journalist would follow would be to not respond. The wise journalists who don't want to look foolish pursue that course. They don't want to try and engage bloggers over the years and you'll find many of them will just ignore you because they don't want to get into any of this. And I assume it's because they know there's little for them to gain from it, and a lot to lose.” But despite this notion, Goldberg doesn’t seem to be at a loss for a platform. As Greenwald pointed out in an update to a recent post: “This Sunday’s roundtable on Meet the Press will be conservative Rick Lazio, conservative Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal, journalist Katty Kay of the BBC, and, for balance . . . the well-known liberal Jeffrey Goldberg. Ladies and Gentleman: your Liberal (and Supremely Accountability-Free) Media.” Original title and link for this post: Clash of the Blogosphere Titans    |
| Digg Sends Reddit 250,000 Hits And 9,000 New Users In A Day Posted: 31 Aug 2010 02:37 PM PDT
The Digg user community is in the throes of a chaotic and noisy protest, clamoring for the ending of numerous griefs that they feel the fourth version of Digg is causing them. What Digg’s plan is for the next few days is somewhat up in the air, but tweets from Kevin Rose seem to point to a course of changes that will placate the most aggrieved users that make Digg what it is. Part of the protest that was thrown up yesterday was to promote the Reddit Digg account, and to shift all its stories to more than just the Digg ‘Top News’ frontpage, but to the top ten list as well. In short, to raise a ruckus, Digg users made Reddit take over Digg for the day. That is old news, what is new are the numbers that Reddit has posted on just what happened during that surge. Reddit had several main claims: Digg sent us 250,000 hits which is about 1/7th of our normal traffic, new signups spiked, and our servers did not collapse. Two things spring to mind. First, Reddit’s claim of a quarter million hits from Digg during the period seems very low. Based on personal experience, taking up as many slots as Reddit did on the Digg top ten, they should have seen a least twice the traffic that they did. This leads us to point two: either Digg’s move towards ‘My News’ is working, and users are beginning to shift their focus there, or Digg’s traffic is down. Time will tell. Reddit, a very open place, was kind enough to share some very interesting graphs for their day in the Digg spotlight. This is their new user sign up rate: And this is their traffic tab, tracking their served impressions per hour: However you slice it, Digg sent Reddit hundreds of thousands of new visitors, hardly the way the Digg crew wanted to celebrate the launch of their long awaited, and much toiled over, new site. If you were Digg, what would you do? Original title and link for this post: Digg Sends Reddit 250,000 Hits And 9,000 New Users In A Day    |
| TNW Mobile Review : The BlackBerry Torch 9800 Posted: 31 Aug 2010 01:37 PM PDT The BlackBerry Torch 9800, the latest, highly anticipated, BlackBerry offering from Research in Motion (RIM) is the first BlackBerry to feature BlackBerry 6. Further, the Torch offers BlackBerry users an all-new touch screen interface, slide-out keyboard, a WebKit browser, offers location features, and the new BlackBerry App World pre-installed. RIM is trying to re-establish the BlackBerry as more than a phone that handles email with ease, that has dominated the enterprise market for years. Recently the growth of Apple's iPhone and Android devices have been staggering, prompting RIM to create a device that would recapture some of the company's lost luster. Let us investigate if the BlackBerry Torch 9800, despite lackluster opening weekend sales, is the device to do just that. Features The BlackBerry Torch 9800 measures in at 4.4″ (5.8″ open) x 2.4″ x .57″ and weighs 5.68 ounces. The first thing I noticed was that the phone felt sturdy, as all BlackBerry devices seem to, with the one I reviewed having the brushed chrome finish on the front of the device, and rubber on the rear of the device (the rear coating being one of the things I truly like about the BlackBerry Torch). The device also features a 3.2″ 360 x 480 capacitive touch screen display, 35 key full QWERTY backlit slide-out keyboard, which remains extremely balanced when opened for input and an optical trackpad for navigation. Where the device fails to stack up to some of its Android and Apple counterparts is in the processing department. The BlackBerry Torch only sports a 624 Mhz processor with 512 MB Flash memory. Fast, but nothing like the 1GHz processors contained in other devices. Honestly, the speed difference is noticeable. The Torch includes 4GB built-in storage plus a microSD/SDHD memory card slot that supports up to 32GB. A 4 GB card is included, giving users 8 GB of storage out-of-the-box. The 5MP camera on the Torch features flash, continuous auto-focus, image stabilization, scene modes, geo-tagging and zoom, as well as video recording up to a resolution of 640×480. Again, the video recording, while a nice feature, is not as strong as some of the Torch's aforementioned competitors. In Use The HandsetThe BlackBerry Torch is a fairly simple device to use. One can choose to type messages using the touchscreen or on the BlackBerry’s keyboard, navigate the features of the device on the same capacitive touch screen or optical trackpad, and browse the Internet using pinch-to-zoom functionality. For those accustomed to BlackBerry's standard features; great email and productivity solutions, users can rest assured that those features are ultimately the phone’s strong suit. What's new is the social networking features added to the BlackBerry Torch. The Torch, thanks to BlackBerry OS 6 includes expanded messaging capabilities to simplify the management of social networking and RSS feeds, provideing integrated access to the BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace (MySpace, I admittedly did not use). These features take some tweaking to make them less overwhelming. My inbox was constantly flooded with updates from Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email. One is best served to read the enclosed manual to make sure your settings don't initially overwhelm you as they did me. Moreover, as someone who accesses multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, I found the apps for each and the integration to be subpar at best. Not a knock on the device itself, more a general observation on the lack of quality BlackBerry apps available to users. Apps After initially powering up the BlackBerry Torch users will notice a set of pre-loaded icons which allow them to download and immediately begin using a variety of apps from Bloomberg, ESPN, The Weather Channel and Slacker Radio. In addition, users can download Facebook, MySpace and Twitter apps. As mentioned, the social networking apps available to BlackBerry owners are lacking when compared to those on other devices, there just isn’t the selection of high-quality apps available to BlackBerry users as there is through the Apple App Store and Android Market. One nice feature related to apps is the inclusion of BlackBerry App World pre-installed on the Torch, supporting carrier billing through AT&T (the network I tested the Torch on), making it easier for customers to discover and purchase applications. Touchscreen The touchscreen, whilst small (3.2″ 360 x 480) is responsive, bright and detailed. It features double-tap to zoom that can intelligently wrap text in a column while maintaining the placement of a page’s key elements as well as the smartphone standard pinch to zoom. Call Quality The much-maligned network of AT&T gave me no problems when making calls with the Torch. Making both local and long distance calls, the recipients of my calls heralded the call's quality. From my end, using the phone in speaker mode, standard mode and with a Bluetooth headset, the calls were crisp and there were no dropped calls during the testing period. Battery Life I found the battery; a removable, rechargeable, 1300 mAhr battery, to be slightly better than average. The product details claim the following with respect to the battery: "provides approximately 5.8 hours of talk time on 3G networks or 30 hours of audio playback or 6 hours of video playback." After heavy email, social network, instant messaging, and web browsing, with a few phone calls thrown in, the battery held up quite well, giving me a solid day's charge. Starting with a full charge at 5:00am, I had roughly 10% left at the end of the day, finishing at 11:00pm. Things We Like
Things We Didn’t Like
Conclusion The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is definitely a step forward for RIM. I like the feel of the device, the touchscreen is responsive and the keyboard is easy to use, something that many other comparable devices lack, which until testing the Torch I forgot how much I missed. For the enterprise user, the Torch remains a great device for composing email, organising tasks, catching up on basic news and if they are new to, or are the occasional social network user, the new features on the Torch extend what RIM already does really well. For the more social network savvy user who enjoys a lightning quick phone and access to a bevy of quality, useful apps, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is going to be a disappointment despite the hype surrounding its launch. Original title and link for this post: TNW Mobile Review : The BlackBerry Torch 9800    |
| The Official Post From Digg Concerning Their New CEO Posted: 31 Aug 2010 01:23 PM PDT
Original title and link for this post: The Official Post From Digg Concerning Their New CEO    |
| Amazing time-waster of the day? Swarmation. Posted: 31 Aug 2010 12:59 PM PDT This is Swarmation. You’re a pixel. A shape gets called out and you have a limited amount of time to use your arrow keys to guide your avatar into formation. For each one you land, you get points. Fail, you lose points. Productivity is about to hit a daily low.
Original title and link for this post: Amazing time-waster of the day? Swarmation.    |
| Official Pictures Of The T-Mobile G2 Surface Posted: 31 Aug 2010 12:57 PM PDT
CellPhoneSignal grabbed the first official shots of the T-Mobile G2, suggesting that the device will come in any colour that you want, as long as it’s silver. It has some pretty decent specifications too, positioning it as a device worthy of carrying the torch from its predecessor, the very first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1:
Original title and link for this post: Official Pictures Of The T-Mobile G2 Surface    |
| 34% of people believe all websites are dangerous. Posted: 31 Aug 2010 12:20 PM PDT
German IT security firm Avira did a survey based on a worldwide customer base of over 100 million people. The question? “Where do you suspect is the greatest danger of malware infection on the Internet?” The responses might surprise you:
Most interesting, to us, is the final statistic. What it says, in essence, is that 34% of people who visit The Next Web (or any other site, for that matter) believe that it could host malware. While modern browsers and anti-malware software do an admirable job of preventing infections, it is still staggering to see that figure. Why does the belief exist, though? Is it because people are more acutely aware of malware’s ability to be embedded into seemingly innocuous content (Flash, scripts, etc)? Or has the public been led to believe that the Internet as a whole is a hotbed of malware activity, thus breeding a culture of fear? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave them in the comments, eh? Original title and link for this post: 34% of people believe all websites are dangerous.    |
| Hootsuite needs your lingua franca: Help with crowd-sourced translation of Hootsuite Posted: 31 Aug 2010 12:17 PM PDT
Hootsuite is turning to its users, just like open-source projects like WordPress do when they need translation help, for their help in translating all the parts of Hootsuite so people around the world can feel the warmth of the owl’s feathery hug. The folks at Hootsuite are even going a set further by letting the community decide which languages get priority for development and launch. Sure here in Canada, English and French are common, but maybe Chinese or German or Dutch or Russian might be better and more popular choices from the community. You just don’t know until you ask and since Hootsuite is all about community (I’ve been a user since the early beta days and know the folks there well), they are asking. If you’re interested in helping out, you start at the special Hootsuite Translation site and register. If you have more time on your hands, and are fluent in several languages, you can even apply to be a translation coordinator to give the thumbs up or down to how parts are translated. You might be wondering if crowd-sourcing translation is a good idea. Well, it works pretty well in the WordPress community (I’ve lost count of all the localizations). Also, small startups can’t afford to have apps translated beyond a core of their user base (if at all). Frankly, I think the fact that Hootsuite is available in English and Japanese is pretty amazing. Translation is a tricky and expensive proposition, so my hat is off to my friends at Hootsuite for taking a big, bold step towards making Twitter a little more inclusive for everyone. Hmm, I think we have more than a few languages represented here at The Next Web… Original title and link for this post: Hootsuite needs your lingua franca: Help with crowd-sourced translation of Hootsuite    |
| webOS 2.0 APIs, beta SDK and features surface Posted: 31 Aug 2010 11:53 AM PDT
Due out later this year, webOS 2.0, will, according to PreCentral, include these new/improved/re-branded features (as well as most likely many more):
So “Stacks” will be webOS 2.0’s multi-tasking interface, “Just Type” will be its universal search plus a new “Quick Actions” function that will direct the OS to do tasks, “Synergy” will be will include APIs for devs to create email/contacts/calendar apps, and the new OS will add better HTML5 and JavaScript support. Overall, sounds interesting (especially when you think about it in terms of a HP tablet) and we highly suggest that if you’re really interested you read the entire PreCentral post, which is pretty comprehensive. Image: PreCentral Original title and link for this post: webOS 2.0 APIs, beta SDK and features surface    |
| Beware: fake Tweetdeck “download” tweets hide software trojan Posted: 31 Aug 2010 10:05 AM PDT Tweetdeck has announced that a series of malicious tweets are circulating that ask users to download a new version of Tweetdeck, but actually the link downloads a software trojan (virus) onto your computer. Possibly, this attack was timed to coincide with Twitter’s move to OAuth today – i.e. the attackers may have thought that some people would think they needed to upgrade Tweetdeck because of the change – but no way to know for sure. Here’s how Tweetdeck’s blog explains the threat:
Original title and link for this post: Beware: fake Tweetdeck “download” tweets hide software trojan    |
| This Is Digg’s New CEO: Matt Williams Posted: 31 Aug 2010 09:55 AM PDT
And Digg kept up the poaching game popular in the Valley, stealing Matt Williams from Amazon, his home for more than a decade, for their CEO slot. This concludes Digg’s executive shuffle, from Jay Adelson, to Kevin Rose, and now to Williams, who we suspect will be a long term fixture at the company. This announcement is not a surprise, Rose himself hinted before that a new CEO was just around the corner. Kevin will return to his previous role as Chief Architect. More as it comes.
Original title and link for this post: This Is Digg’s New CEO: Matt Williams    |
| No More Mark, Hurd Leaving News Corp. Board Posted: 31 Aug 2010 09:43 AM PDT
How did it happen? He was not nominated for re-election, meaning that he is not being fired outright, but will be allowed to expire like a bad bill on the desk of an ambivalent governor. Whatever zenith Hurd was hoping to swing his star to, that race is over. If you missed the genesis of the fiasco, Hurd behaved very inappropriately with a certain staffer, enough so that HP launched a private investigation into the matter. From our previous coverage:
Goodbye Hurd, at least you did well in some capacity when leading HP. You are hardly what News Corp. needs though, and they know it. Original title and link for this post: No More Mark, Hurd Leaving News Corp. Board    |
Aiming to reduce the background noise and the “hisses and crackles” often heard on a normal mobile call, Orange has launched HD Voice calls nationwide in the UK today.
So it’s been a while since Apple did the whole live streaming thing, I for one have missed it. Some 
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