19 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Steve Jobs named Financial Times ‘Person of the Year’ [TNW Apple]
- Path Gets Video, Limits Memories To 10 Seconds [TNW Apple]
- Samsung’s new LTE 4G Android handset leaks, will be Verizon bound [TNW Mobile]
- Samsung Galaxy S surpasses 9.3 million units shipped, almost reaches yearly goal [TNW Mobile]
- The new CatPaint app is ossum with more LOL cats AND laser eyes [TNW Apps]
- The perfect social network? 6 things it must contain. [TNW Social Media]
- 10 must-have apps to make your Android or iPhone shots spectacular [TNW Apps]
- Wigglehop. An excellent way to ease film search frustration [TNW Apps]
- Julian Assange interviewed by David Frost earlier today [Video] [TNW Shareables]
- Documents on the iPad: Where to sync? [TNW Lifehacks]
- Postling now has 50,000 linked accounts and YouTube integration [TNW Social Media]
- mixeeba: Turning DJ sets and tracklists into linked shopping lists [TNW Apps]
- Richard Branson is giving away free Project iPad magazines this Christmas! [TNW Media]
- Social media addict? Noise to Signal releases its 2011 calendar for free. [TNW Social Media]
- Reeder blasts MobileRSS for stealing its design [TNW Apple]
- Does Windows Phone 7 now actually matter to web developers? [TNW Microsoft]
- Skype Downtime Complaints Bring The Fail Whale to Twitter [Update: Fixed!] [TNW Twitter]
- 365.io — Photo sharing that’s not social and not free, but maybe that’s the point. [TNW Apps]
- Avatar “Most pirated film of 2010″ [TNW Media]
- 5 Great Skype Alternatives [TNW Apps]
| Steve Jobs named Financial Times ‘Person of the Year’ [TNW Apple] Posted: 23 Dec 2010 02:01 AM PST
The reason? It’s all about the iPad. In its article [registration required to read], The FT says that the tablet device is: “The culmination of an approach that he has seemingly been perfecting for his entire career.” Jobs is praised for being “A stern taskmaster who understands the art of the possible, rather than a long-range visionary. That means pushing relentlessly forward rather than milking old successes – even ones as significant as the iPod.” Jobs’ perfectionism during Apple product launch events, his mastery of the “Reality distortion field” and the way he has successfully bounced back from last year’s liver transplant are other qualities praised by FT. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the FT picked Jobs as its person of the year. This year, its iPad app has been a success and the newspaper recently offered its staff a £300 rebate against the purchase of Apple’s tablet. In a memo to staff, CEO John Ridding said at the time “We need to fully understand their potential and share the user experience to better understand our customers and the developments and innovations taking place in the market”.Image source [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Path Gets Video, Limits Memories To 10 Seconds [TNW Apple] Posted: 23 Dec 2010 12:07 AM PST
When the photo sharing service launched, Path was an email-only friend service that allowed users to share photos taken in real-time with up to 50 friends. As users downloaded the app and got into the slick sharing process and the gorgeous design, the Path Team decided to allow photos taken previously to be posted, giving the option to import from the iPhone’s Media Library. Path 1.2 adds Path Video, tagging videos with people, places and things, adding context to the media that people share. With Facebook and Address Book friend imports, the unnecessarily difficult email friend-adding process has been done away with and networks of friends can be built a whole lot easier. The new update also allows users to see all of the people tagged in their last three shared moments, as well as improved notifications which will alert a user in real-time when someone in their friends list updates. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Samsung’s new LTE 4G Android handset leaks, will be Verizon bound [TNW Mobile] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 11:46 PM PST
According to he tipster, the new Samsung LTE 4G smartphone will feature a first for a Verizon device – a front-facing camera, the device currently runs Froyo and Samsung’s custom UI TouchWiz. There’s not much else to go on other than a decent shot of the screen (no Mr Blurrycam here), leading us to think its not quite a leak but possibly a very tightly controlled marketing exercise by Samsung. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) commences at the beginning of January, we are sure that this 4G beauty will be among a number of new devices unveiled by the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Samsung Galaxy S surpasses 9.3 million units shipped, almost reaches yearly goal [TNW Mobile] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 11:31 PM PST
At the beginning of the month we reported that 2.3 million Galaxy S handsets had been sold in South Korea, this made it the first smartphone to sell two million units in the Korea, according to The Chosunibo. Worldwide, the Galaxy S is on track to become the first Android handset to reach the 10 million unit mark by the end of this month, with currently 9.3 million units sold as of December 17. In comparison, the iPhone 4 reaches 14 million global sales in October, demonstrating Samsung’s worldwide popularity as a smartphone manufacturer. Samsung has sold over 3 million units in the US alone, it is expected that North America accounts for a large percentage of the worldwide sales.Image Credit, Engadget [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| The new CatPaint app is ossum with more LOL cats AND laser eyes [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 09:59 PM PST
The new app features a complete re-design, the ability to use landscape style photos and edit more than one at a time. The best part about the new app? There are 8 brand new cats, and one of them is named Boris! Not kidding. Plus you can flip, resize and give your cats laser eyes. The new app has several new sharing functionalities, other than the mobile gallery, you can share photos to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr (no Flickr yet). Buy it in the iTunes store for $.99. Check out a couple of my recent CatPaint creations below.
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| The perfect social network? 6 things it must contain. [TNW Social Media] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 08:58 PM PST
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. The more that I use Facebook, the more that it annoys me. Even with the ability to block applications, it still feels too much like I’m voluntarily sitting in a room that’s designed for sensory overload. And yet, even with all of the bells and whistles, it also manages to feel as if something’s missing. So I set out to give a roadmap of my perfect social network. It’s one that should make money, keep me interested and still manage to not annoy me. What would that take? Here’s what I’ve come up with: Facebook IntegrationWithout a doubt, my ideal social network isn’t the one that’s ideal for everyone. Facebook has that family-friendly thing about it where everybody seems to be on the service. For my own, I’d prefer that it’s smaller, but I need the ability to let my Facebook friends communicate with me. So, Facebook integration is likely paramount, in some fashion. For that matter, I’d like it to have integration with other networks, too. On Twitter, for instance, I have a huge amount of people that I’d love to keep in touch with, but I’m not close enough with them to give them the full details that I have on Facebook. That said, it would be great to have one-click access to the people I follow on Twitter. Clean and LightIf there’s one thing that FriendFeed did better than any other site, it was its ability to filter and keep things clean. Discussions were easy to keep in track and images/videos/etc all displayed beautifully. This is the thing that I think my perfect social network could learn from greatly.
What it didn’t do so well, I don’t think, is in how it allowed you to post from a thousand different services. My social network wouldn’t allow this. You could post out of it, but not in to it. This is something that Miio handled pretty well, and I’d love to see it again. A Focus on CommunicationI don’t care about exchanging photos. I’ll upload mine to Flickr and then link you if I think it’s important. I don’t want games, applications, memories, dates or anything else. I want a simple platform where I can talk with people that I’ve chosen without the worry of other, random people seeing it. While some people might suggest going to email or IM, I think a network is still appropriate here. I want that “sticky” factor of being able to scroll back to see what I’ve missed among my friends. I want to quip in a conversation that I’m not even a part of. These are things that can’t really happen in a one-to-one basis. You need that 1+ factor in order to make it truly social. Privacy Is StandardOn my network, no matter what you do, it’s private by default. Update a status? You’re the only one who sees it unless you’ve specified otherwise. Nothing should be public. Ever. You want to eliminate privacy issues? Then do so by turning private into the rule and not the exception. Opt out? Never. Opt in to everything. You had to opt in to the site by signing up, so everything else that you want to do should be a conscious effort. My network should not be a bullhorn by which I broadcast my every move. If I want people to know where I’m going, I’ll purposely and expressly post a status update to tell them. Of course, if I don’t have applications tracking my every move, then I don’t have applications bugging my friends with updates. Worldwide AccessAnother place where FriendFeed showed its genius was in having a site that runs just as well on my Android browser as it does in Chrome, Firefox or any of the rest. The vast majority of anything I want to do, I can do right from the Android or iPhone browser. My network? I want to access it from the lowliest of web browsers. I want to be able to give status updates, reply and talk with my friends without having to download an application that will likely suck anyway. Besides, when all you have is a communication platform that is based on a website, do you really need a dedicated application? Steve Jobs would rip his hair out to hear me say it, but apps are useless for so many basic tasks. Massively IntegratedA message appears asking me to have lunch on Tuesday? I should be able to click the link and, because I’ve chosen Google Calendar as my calendar app of choice, the network would help me to schedule that meeting. A phone number is listed? It should be able to be clicked or highlighted then added to my contacts. Beauty in simplicity. Is this so much to ask? These are, simply, the things that have to happen before I’ll find a network that really feels like “home” to me. As of yet, some sites have some of these features, but no site has all of them. We’re on the cusp of 2011, and yet nobody has figured out how to make a social networking site without annoyances. So rise up, my code-bearing friends of the world. If you create this thing, I’ll be your official, unpaid mouthpiece. Gladly. In the mean time, I’m sure I’ve missed things. What are they? Tell me in the comments. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| 10 must-have apps to make your Android or iPhone shots spectacular [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 07:50 PM PST If you like taking pics on your device as much as we do, then you're always looking for apps that will help you produce stunning photographs. We've provided 5 iOS apps and 5 Android apps that offer gorgeous effects, sexy filters and uploading to the cloud. iPhone & iPod touchColor Splash
This effect adds a level of drama to a photo as well, a picture of the family in black & white with the Christmas tree all in colour could potentially be really beautiful pic. While a user is in the process of editing a pic, Color Splash allows for zooming to ensure the user doesn't go over the lines or colourizing something by accident. Users can paint in both colour and black & white, so re-touching mistakes is quite easy. All in all, this app is fantastic and one I'll be adding to my arsenal of photo-editing apps over the holidays. This app has both a free and ad-free paid version for .99. ToonCamera
This is an interesting way to spruce up family videos, and the video itself can even be uploaded to YouTube within the export options. Users can modify the look of the cartoon-effect by tweaking the line widths or by playing with different styles; cartoon, sketch and stipple styles. At first glance, viewing the cartoon effects through the camera is really cool, the default effect available when the app is launched, appeared to have a sort of SinCity-ish look. The other added features have completely different styles including; black & white sketches, over saturated drawings and comic book. The quality of the effects are excellent and images and video can be later shared with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or via email. And, If you have an iPhone 4, you can also switch between the front & back cam. Across the board, it's a sweet photography app, and it’s only .99 CameraBag
CameraBag for the iPhone has multiple filters to help you add some character to those bland holiday photos. It's an extremely straight-forward app that offers 14 high quality filters Using one of the filters called 1962, a user is capable of taking a boring pic of grandma and making her look worthy of a vintage Rolling Stone cover –it's impressive. Each one of the filters also comes with pre-set boarders and crops although they can be turned off/on within the CameraBag settings. Another nice thing about this app is how quickly users can preview filters. After taking a pic/selecting an image from the device's photo library, a user can fly through the previews by using a flick gesture on the screen. Output sizes can be adjusted before exporting/saving a photo however there are no options to share the photo with social networks, only email. If you have an iPad, I'd suggest you grab the iPad version, it's stunning. With the iPad version, you'll still receive the filters but it offers options to upload photos straight to popular photo storage sites such as Flickr. The iPhone version is $1.99.
Instagram is a free photography app with a social twist, it enhances photos and it connects you with your friend’s photography. After logging into Facebook or Twitter within Instagram, the app searches for people and common users within its service. And once a few friends are added, their images can be browsed, rated and commented on. There are also quite a few neat filters to alter photos and a few different ways to discover new photography. Images can be browsed by friend profiles, the friend feed, popular images or by a user's profile page. The entire stream of pics a user has taken is posted on the profile page, it's similar to a Facebook wall but it only contains pics. By using one of the 12 filters, users can alter their photos in a variety of artistic ways, one of the better filters called "1977" will transform the image into an oldschool vintage looking pic. Overall most of the filters I tried were groovy and the added value of having a social network built-in is great. The user interface is pretty slick and the service itself is addictive. Instagram is a major win, expect for the fact that users are "forced to browse and navigate solely from the iPhone” Photogene
After launching the app, users can take a pic within the app or choose an image from the device's photo library. The user interface is highly intuitive and it displays the entire toolbar flush to the edge of the screen. With all of the tools visible and readily available, it makes photo-editing really snappy. Photogene's cropping feature works very well with the use of the multi-touch screen. To crop, users simply preform a pinch-to-zoom gesture on the screen — it even shows the image dimensions as you move the cropping tool over the image. This app is also great for adding boarders and comic speech bubbles, both of these tools have a wealth of different styles within. After a user finishes editing, the resolution of the pic can be tweaked and shared through email, Facebook or Twitter. Photogene is available for $1.99. AndroidVignette
Vignette has even included short cuts for the effect settings, this enables users to add a series of bookmarks to the desktop. This is beneficial because the short cuts eliminate the need to switch back and forth between effects. If you know you want to use the "toy camera" effect as an example, instead of fumbling around for it in the app's settings, a user could just tap on the short cut on their desktop. A few of the effects available include; toy camera, vintage, lens effects, cinematic and infrared. Pics can additionally be exported to email or through social network apps like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. There are so many stylized filters in Vignette, it would take you a great deal of time to try them all, and for a free app, that's impressive. The paid version of Vignette is $3.93 and offers higher resolution images (up to 8MP) whereas the free demo version limits the jpeg settings to a smaller 0.3 megapixel photo. Camera 360
Within the app, the editing options are divided by modes and effects. The modes screen offers a few wacky effects like scenery mode. This may sound strange but 'scenery mode' produces a photo of an artist painting on a canvas, it lets users view the camera through the artist's canvas and snap a pic. The end result looks like the artist painted the image taken with the camera. As we'd mentioned they're a bit wacky but fun. Tilt shift is another great mode to play with, it transforms a pic into a miniature, basically making a pic of scenery look as though it's a tiny village. Aside from the modes, there's a bank of effects and additional photo optimizing options. Photos with poor lighting can be optimized with brightness or other corrective features such as white balance and focus. Sending and exporting images to social networks and email is also supported. Camera 360 has both a free and paid version for $3.99 which is ad-free with a few more effects. PicSay
This can add a great deal of fun to even the worst of your photos. I tend to end up with a lot of boring photos of my family over the holiday, but adding a word bubble can sometimes turn a worthless pic into a hilarious piece of art. There are about 15 effects within the free version and each one of the them can be altered to reduce or increase the strength of the effect. One of the best effects is dizziness. This effect makes the pic look as though it has double-vision, it's a perfect effect when you match it up with an image of someone with holding a beer. Using PicSay, mobile photographers can have some serious fun with photos, an ideal app for the holidays. Two versions of the PicSay app are available; free and paid. The paid version is $4.10 and offers higher quality for imported images, more stickers and additional effects. Adobe Photoshop Express
Fixing images that are too dark or dull can be altered by adjusting the brightness, exposure and tint. The strength of the brightness, as an example, will increase by simply tapping the image, and the more a user taps, the brighter it will become. One of the best features within this app is batch uploading. Mobile photographers can send a group of photos simultaneously to their photoshop.com account or to social networks; Facebook and Twitter. After selecting a group of photos to upload, the app will display a preview list of the images with the added option to include photo captions. For a free app, it’s great. Pixelpipe Post & Upload HD
Pixelpipe will automatically display all of the images found on your device within the media screen. Within media, users can "check off" which images they want to share, this is great because you aren't required to share one by one, instead it allows you to upload an entire batch. This is especially handy over the holidays because people tend to be extra snap-happy and uploading can take forever. A plethora of social networks and photo management sites like flickr can be added through the use of pipes. Users can add as many pipes as they like and assign what images go to which site. Images can be viewed in an upload queue and users can add default tags to the batch of pictures. And if all that isn't cool enough, this app will also allow you to create and publish a blog post around the image. Bloggers can add a title, body of text and tags to the post and publish on the web. If you're blogging service isn't listed in the available pipes, users can add their own blogging site by punching in the url, username and password. If you think you'll be sharing family photos over the holidays, the app is going to save you a bunch of time, and it’s free. Did we miss one of your favourite photography apps? If you know of a great app that we haven't listed or have a suggestion about mobile photography, please tell us about it in the comments.Image: Holiday Scene [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Wigglehop. An excellent way to ease film search frustration [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 07:33 PM PST
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| Julian Assange interviewed by David Frost earlier today [Video] [TNW Shareables] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 06:00 PM PST We’ve reported about this “pugnacious pig headed, absolutist, megalomaniac” “Martyr“ enough, but this is still worth a watch considering everything that’s happened of late. He also discusses what he’s chosen not to before, the rape accusations. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Documents on the iPad: Where to sync? [TNW Lifehacks] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 05:40 PM PST
Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place If there is one standing criticism of the iPad, it's that the lack of a "real" file system makes getting documents onto and off of your iPad less than pleasant. There are, for all intents and purposes, three main ways to get stuff on and off of your iPad:
Yes, SimpleNote is great for getting your SimpleNote content on and off your iPad, but as awesome as it is (and I'm writing this post in nvALT, syncing to SimpleNote, which will then go to Scrivener and my iPad and iPhone) it can only sync those text files. Wait! What about apps like Writings and PlainText! They sync too! Yes, but they both sync to Dropbox (which is awesome, don't get me wrong). This is exactly why I started wondering about the question of "where to sync" instead of "which app to use" when I sat down to write this post. Before I get into this there is one glitch to all the document discussion: iWork for iPad apps. Yeah Apple really has us over a barrel there. In its infinite wisdom, documents in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are rather stuck in there unless you employ some tricks. Yes, I know that you can send the files from there back to iDisk and other places, but it's not a round trip situation where there is one copy of the files being edited and updated. Is there a choice? Now then…choices, choices, choices. What am I saying, I think there is only really one choice: Dropbox. Yes, you're going to have to use iTunes for some things (like VLC for movies and iWork files sometimes), but I think if you're not using Dropbox on your iPad you're really missing out. Let's start with the basics here. Make sure you have the Dropbox app for your iPad. Although I use apps like GoodReader and ReaddleDocs for a lot of file browsing and management, when I need to get something like a screenshot or document to or from my iPad fast it just open the native Dropbox app. I use Dropbox so often that it sits on my iPad app dock. From the basic app you can add photos to Dropbox quickly, but other files…not so much. You can open many different types of files for viewing then open for editing in the apps you might have installed. Which is why you should look at apps like GoodReader and ReaddleDocs. These apps take the file approach to the next (and essential) level: editing, saving and moving, and local storage. While I probably shouldn't flip back and forth between the apps, I do like the PDF annotations in GoodReader better than in ReaddleDocs. ReaddleDocs does now offer round-trip opening and saving to and from Dropbox, iDisk, and their own cloud service, which makes it my app of choice (yes, it's $5 vs $1 for GoodReader, but I think the cost is well worth it). Could free iDisk change things? There is a dark horse in this discussion, which is if Apple decides to give users a certain amount of space for free through iDisk. Would this kill off Dropbox, SugarSync, and others? Not unless Apple was so generous to give people more than about 5-10 GB of storage space (I have 50 GB on Dropbox). What it would change is how I'd suggest managing documents on the iPad. If everyone had 2-5 GB of space on iDisk, then yeah I'd use iDisk for documents, no question. I'd still use Dropbox for everything else, but since all the iWork apps on the iPad can send to iDisk and ReaddleDocs can round-trip open and save to iDisk, it's really a no-brainer. Should be less work, less hassle and few versions of documents rolling around. Now which apps? Okay, well we're going to sync documents on the iPad using Dropbox as our primary tool, what should we use to create them? Let's talk about that in the next post. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Postling now has 50,000 linked accounts and YouTube integration [TNW Social Media] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:55 PM PST
Postling has seen pretty amazing growth this year, skyrocketing from a mere 1,000 users in January to nearly 20,000 at present. Last January there were only 2,500 accounts linked up in Postling, and now they’ve reached an impressive 50,000. Even more impressive: They are tracking 5,500 times more posts now than at the beginning of the year, pulling in the comments from over 12 million posts in December alone. Today, they announced integration with YouTube. Users will now be able to upload videos to YouTube, and monitor and reply to all of their comments directly from within Postling. Users can also create instant email notifications of comments on their YouTube videos.
A few weeks ago, Postling quietly launched their new analytics feature, in response to user feedback. Users can now see their stats for brands and accounts, including posts, comments received and number of tracking results. Looking forward to 2011, Postling has even more social media sharing features coming down the pipeline. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| mixeeba: Turning DJ sets and tracklists into linked shopping lists [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:25 PM PST
mixeeba is solving the problem of a fractured music buying market by making it easier for DJ’s and fans to find where to purchase tracks. With a variety of options, depending on your need, the mixeeba crew is really onto something cool. For instance, in March I aired a guest mix from a DJ on my show. His tracklist contained quite a few items which weren’t yet released, but are now available. Pasting the tracklist into the Instant section on mixeeba, I’m provided with a listing that shows 4 of the 12 tracks being available, plus links to the relative stores.
While this option is handy for listeners, the choices for DJ’s or producers are even greater. First, you can choose to have your tracklist output in HTML, BBCode or even take a peek at the rendered HTML version. Want to upload tracklists to your site and have them automatically linked? There’s even a JavaScript addition to do just that. Interestingly, mixeeba even manages to pick through remixed versions of tracks with ease. What do we want to see added? Affiliate options would be great, for those who publish tracklists using the JavaScript addition. That way, if a site that is linked uses an affiliate program, the blog or site owner could stand a chance of getting paid. But beyond that? Not a thing that we can think of at the moment. It’s handy and it works. What more can you ask for? Give mixeeba a try and let us know your thoughts in the comments. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Richard Branson is giving away free Project iPad magazines this Christmas! [TNW Media] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:01 PM PST Remember when Richard Branson cabbed around New York in a black pullover hoodie and placed USB dead drops and paper mache mannequins in various spots of the City? It was his way of saying, “I want you to be a part of Project! My new iPad magazine!” That is why Sir Richard Branson is my favorite billionaire. In case you need further clarification, read the article I wrote about Project’s launch and call for talent here or watch the video below. Today, Virgin announced the winner of this competition to design the front cover of their crowd-sourced issue planned for early next year – you can see the winning video here. TRON fans, look for the ‘error’ in the video. The video was made using Photoshop and Motion, by a design psychology consultant and author known on YouTube as “The Motivated Life.” Secondly, with the iPad set to be one of the top gifts this holiday season, some of Virgin’s key partners are sponsoring Project as a festive gift. Courtesy of Virgin America,, Virgin Blue and Virgin Mobile Canada, issue 1 will be free to all people downloading it between the 23rd and 29th of December. Download your free copy of Project here. Issue 2 will hit the app store on January 7th, 2010. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Social media addict? Noise to Signal releases its 2011 calendar for free. [TNW Social Media] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:29 PM PST
Setting himself to work, he started putting together the 2011 Noise to Signal calendar as a project on Zazzle. After uploading a few of the images, though, he realized that the better idea was to give it away for free. So what you’ll find is a 12-month calendar, in PDF form. On the top side you’ll get a collection of cartoons and quips, then the typical monthly calendar at the bottom. Perfect for the cubicle-dweller in all of us, even if you no longer dwell in a cubicle. Want a preview? Cottingham has been so kind as to make a Slideshare presentation of the calendar so that you can decide whether or not it’s worth the print. Our opinion? Great stuff. Thanks, Rob! A free cartoon calendar for 2011 View more presentations from Rob Cottingham. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Reeder blasts MobileRSS for stealing its design [TNW Apple] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:03 PM PST
That seems to be the case for Reeder, an RSS reader for the iPhone and iPad. Released in June 2010, Reeder for iPad implemented new features to its iPhone application, taking advantage of the iPad’s real-estate to deliver news in a efficient and stylish way. About an hour ago, Reeder’s creator Silvio Rizzi posted a message to Twitter from the @ReederApp Twitter account highlighting a new release from the team behind MobileRSS, a rival app on the App Store, a release that looks remarkably similar to Reeder.
The link takes you to a comparison page showing you the similarities between the two apps. I say similarities but I’m more inclined to use the exact word that Rizzi uses for his URL suffix – ripoff. There have been a number of apps that have taken “design inspiration” from another app: it is thought that Apple liked Delicious Library’s layout and UI so much they decided to copy it. Not stopping there, a patent filing in August showed Apple submitting schematics for an app that was already on the App Store, copying the functionality and layout completely. What do you think? Is Rizzi justified to label MobileRSS HD 3.0 as a ripoff of Reeder for iPad? These Twitter users certainly think so.
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| Does Windows Phone 7 now actually matter to web developers? [TNW Microsoft] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 12:16 PM PST
Whether or not you feel that Windows Phone 7 has a real future in the mobile world, it can no longer be said that the phone line is going away any time soon (Microsoft is behind it 100%), and that means that every major website is now going to have to test to make sure that they are compatible with the new Microsoft mobile line. For the largest of web brands, it may be time to develop a new dedicated mobile application. Why is that the case? Because web traffic from WP7 handsets is starting to matter. Those sales are turning into hits. I took a look around our traffic numbers here at TNW, and I can share some general data about how quickly WP7 is growing as a platform that our readers use. Now, the majority of TNW traffic (as is true of all major websites) is from non-mobile devices (laptops, desktops etc). That said, we track carefully what platforms are the big drivers of our mobile traffic. WP7 is moving up the ranks. From October to November, hits to TNW from WP7 handsets grew a total of 761%. In the moth of December, forecasting conservatively, hits to TNW from WP7 phones should grow 150%. While the total number of hits from the users of Windows Phone 7 handsets is truly a drop in the bucket (and a small drop at that) compared to our total monthly traffic, the growth of the phones’ market share cannot be denied. Especially if it continues on its current path. What does this mean for us at TNW? It means that we actually have to pay attention to the mobile offerings from Microsoft for the first time in recent memory. That was not true for Windows Mobile 6.x, and it surely wasn’t true for KIN. Microsoft seems to have pulled the trick that everyone thought that they couldn’t; the Redmond giant is a player in the mobile space yet again. If the phone line manages to keep its momentum up through into January, and then manages to have a strong start on Verizon here in the US, the mobile world is going to have another major competitor. And they said it couldn’t be done. Microsoft has proven the old maxim that quality sells. How much traffic are you seeing from WP7 devices?Top Image Credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Skype Downtime Complaints Bring The Fail Whale to Twitter [Update: Fixed!] [TNW Twitter] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 12:14 PM PST
Twitter is aware of the problem, posting the following message to its Status Blog:
As we write, the service is slowing returning to some users, a Twitter Search for “Twitter down” brought 1755 updates in under five minutes. At first the streaming API failed, leaving third-party clients without service, then mixed messages were displayed on the Twitter.com website. Some people had the fail whale others had a technical error like the following:
We have contacted Twitter to see what the problem was, more on this as it happens. Update: It seems the service should now be fixed for all users; Twitter has confirmed that the problems affecting the site should now be fixed. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| 365.io — Photo sharing that’s not social and not free, but maybe that’s the point. [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 11:08 AM PST
365.io is hoping that, by offering you a really slick-looking page on which to display your work, you’ll be more motivated. Oh, there’s also the fact that, in order to use the service, you’ll be paying money. As most parents can tell you, people will respect things that they pay for more than they will those items which are free. So, how slick is the service? Here’s a look at one public gallery:
Each day at midnight, a new placeholder is opened. As you go about your day, snapping pictures, you can choose to drag and drop a photo to that placeholder (or browse to upload it). What you end up with is a very minimalist, clean-looking gallery to which you are given a URL for sharing. How is it different? Almost everything we’ve seen when it comes to 365 projects, or photo sharing in general, is massively social. 365.io differs in the point that your gallery is private, by default, and you can choose the people with whom you’d want to share your URL. So to answer the question in full, it’s different in just about every way than anything else we’ve seen. In fact, it’s so blatantly against the grain that it truly stands out. That’s not even mentioning the fact that it’s also one of the best looking sites we’ve seen. While there are other choices out there, including Flickr sets and DailyBooth among others, the idea of a minimalist interface and private gallery is somewhat compelling. The fact that you’ll pay $11 for a year of uploading could very well keep you motivated. Maybe mom was right all along. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Avatar “Most pirated film of 2010″ [TNW Media] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 11:00 AM PST
The figure places it as the most downloaded movie via BitTorrent ever, with 200,000 downloads in just 4 days at one point earlier this year, and it pushes well ahead of last year’s ‘winner’, Star Trek, which was downloaded 10,960,000 times in 2009. It seems downloaders weren’t put off by the stunning 3D effects in the cinematic release of Avatar and were happy to accept a sub-optimal experience for the convenience of a BitTorrent download. TorrentFreak says that its data for the chart is collated from several sources, including reports from thousands of BitTorrent trackers. Elsewhere in the chart , big names included Kick Ass, Inception and Iron Man 2. Surprisingly, summer hit Toy Story 3 doesn’t make the cut. Also nowhere to be seen is The Social Network, which we recently reported was on track to be one of the most pirated movies of the year. While the movie industry is doing its best to make films available in convenient, digital forms such as via iTunes rentals and Netflix streaming, Bittorrent piracy continues unabated. 1 Avatar – 16,580,000 downloads [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| 5 Great Skype Alternatives [TNW Apps] Posted: 22 Dec 2010 10:46 AM PST Skype is down! [at the moment] What’s a global girl to do? If you rely on Skype the way we do at The Next Web you’re probably feeling a bit uncommunicative right now. At least you’re not alone. To the 560 million registered Skype users, here are a few great Skype alternatives to keep you connected. iChat
ooVoo
Google Voice
Even Santa has a Google Voice number. Check out this video on how to get your own Google Voice number here. Tinychat
Facetime
Quite a few people are suggesting “Viber” – and while a great alternative on the mobile, it has no desktop or web interace so we’ve purposely left it off this list.[Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
Samsung has announced that its Galaxy S range of smartphones has surpassed 9.3 million sales, putting it within touching distance of the 10 million unti estimate the company made just months ago.
It’s no secret here at The Next Web that I think LOL cats are pretty funny. So it’s only natural that CatPaint, by Davander Mobile is one of my favorite photo apps for the iPhone. But it’s had the same functions for over a year now, so you can imagine my excitement tonight when they released CatPaint 2.0.
We’ve dealt with the woes of 
Pixelpipe Post & Upload HD
TNW Quick Hit
I used to do a weekly, online radio show. For three hours, each week, I’d play the newest and best tracks that I could find. While I’m not presently doing the show, I still get a huge amount of requests for the tracklists from them. Beyond that, though, I often get the question of “where can I buy it?”
Rob Cottingham is a social media junkie, just like you and just like me. The difference is that he quips about SM in his 
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – that’s great when someone decides to buy a new hat that they first saw worn by you, it’s not so great when its a app you have designed and your competition has lifted nearly every feature that you have painstakingly coded into it.
You know, by now, that a 365 photography project is intended to be a compilation of pictures that you take over the course of 365 days. The problem that most of us run into with the idea is that we get lazy about doing it because there’s simply not much motivation involved with it.
If you have a Mac, 
To use 
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