Posts tagged Mobile

Timehop is great lilly: Timehop has become one of my very favorite things about digital life lately. We’re not investors, but I love what their team has built, because it’s so essentially human. As I described to Jonathan, what happens about every other day, sometime in the morning, is that my wife or I sees a note/picture/tweet from a few years ago — when our son was 2 or 3 or 4 — and we send it to the other. In that way, Timehop is helping us connect with each other to remember some of our fondest memories together.  It’s emblematic of why I love this wave of mobile technology, too — because we have our devices with us all the time, and they can capture images and feelings so quickly and thoughtlessly, they’re becoming more human, and helping us connect.  I do worry some about how technology yanks us out of our present contexts, and I think it’s important to be intentional about issues like that, but these moments of connection, as more and more of our artifacts are digital — and therefore ubiquitous, retrievable, searchable & shareable — well, that’s a pretty special thing for sure. Thanks so much to Jonathan & folks at Timehop — you’ve helped us to remember and talk about and laugh about and cry about many of the most important moments over the last few years. 

Timehop is great

lilly:

Timehop has become one of my very favorite things about digital life lately. We’re not investors, but I love what their team has built, because it’s so essentially human.

As I described to Jonathan, what happens about every other day, sometime in the morning, is that my wife or I sees a note/picture/tweet from a few years ago — when our son was 2 or 3 or 4 — and we send it to the other. In that way, Timehop is helping us connect with each other to remember some of our fondest memories together. 

It’s emblematic of why I love this wave of mobile technology, too — because we have our devices with us all the time, and they can capture images and feelings so quickly and thoughtlessly, they’re becoming more human, and helping us connect. 

I do worry some about how technology yanks us out of our present contexts, and I think it’s important to be intentional about issues like that, but these moments of connection, as more and more of our artifacts are digital — and therefore ubiquitous, retrievable, searchable & shareable — well, that’s a pretty special thing for sure.

Thanks so much to Jonathan & folks at Timehop — you’ve helped us to remember and talk about and laugh about and cry about many of the most important moments over the last few years. 

Samsung’s Galaxy S IV Will Scroll Content Based On Eye Movement, Report Says

Samsung is about to show off a new flagship phone at an event on March 14, and details continue to leak out about the new smartphone. The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen reports today that eye movement-based content scrolling will be among the Galaxy S IV’s features. Chen’s source, a Samsung employee, also says that the emphasis will be on software, not hardware at the upcoming press event.

Samsung’s next smartphone will be able to track a user’s eyes and scroll articles and other types of content based on where they’re focused, the source said, so that if a user was reading a web page and hit the bottom, the device could automatically scroll more content up into view. There’s no guarantee it will be demoed on stage, according to the article, but the Korean company should be showing off more new software features, instead of demoing hardware advancements.

MyRatePlan.com Predicts the Top 5 Best Selling Cell Phones of 2013

A MyRatePlan press release ranking its predictions for the top 3 most popular phones of 2013.

Today, MyRatePlan.com, one of the leading mobile phone information and comparison resource on the web, announced its predictions for the top five most popular smartphones of 2013. MyRatePlan based its rankings on a number of factors including historical manufacturer sales data, revisions to already popular handsets, consumer demand, anticipated features, and general buzz surrounding the phones to determine next year’s best-selling phones.

Rising cell phone bills taking bigger bite out of family budgets

An NBC Minneapolis segment on MyRatePlan.com on how to lower your cell phone bill. My interview starts at the 1:40 mark.

Instagram? Cinemagr.am is my new favorite app

Cinemagr.am allows you to take a short video, and only select one part of it to actually be animated, so that the rest of it looks like a picture.

Yesyes


Created with cinemagr.am

Resistance Is Futile: Why Facebook Acquisitions Tend to Actually Work

A good PandoDaily article on why the Instagram acquisition is different than most Facebook acquisitions, and why it will be interesting to watch.

But implicit to this happy reality, that acquired hands make huge contributions to Facebook, is the sad reality that the acquired companies and projects also largely fall by the wayside. My sense is Facebook is usually pretty up front that this will happen.

And that’s why this acquisition of Instagram will be so interesting to watch. Because it wildly deviates from the playbook that has worked so well. Instagram disappearing and Kevin Systrom starting to work on new Facebook photos for mobile is just not an option, if Instagram is going to successfully meld into the Hacker borg. As we discussed yesterday, Instagram retaining its independence was as important to founder Kevin Systrom as the nosebleed price tag.

Can Instagram play a huge role in Facebook’s success without sacrificing the product so many people love?

I think it can.

Is it a condom or is it an Android? parislemon: joshuanguyen: (via What’s in a Name? | The Intercom Blog) It all makes sense now…

Is it a condom or is it an Android?

parislemon:

joshuanguyen:

(via What’s in a Name? | The Intercom Blog)

It all makes sense now…

blog.intercom.io

Prompts

parislemon:

It’s hard to argue against stories like this and this because any nut job can accuse you of being anti-privacy or an apologist. These stories have some merit, but come on. At what point does this stop? We’re coming up on a year of these types of stories. Next up — BREAKING: Android and iOS can access your processor core. 

Nilay Patel has the best response I’ve seen yet:

Android and iOS are operating systems that run on computers. Granted, these computers are smaller than the ones you grew up with, but they’re still computers. And guess what? In many ways, they work like computers have in past — including the ability of accessing your other files. It’s a feature, not a bug. 

I get that mobile devices are the most personal forms of computing yet. And anytime you say that anything or anyone can “secretly copy” your photos, you’re going to get people running for the hills (and more importantly, reading your story).

Not everything done in computing is intended to be nefarious. At some point, you simply have to trust that someone — be it Apple, Google, or an app developer — isn’t out to screw you over. Likewise, when you leave your house each day, you have to trust that you’re not going to be mugged. You may well be, but you can’t live your life in fear of it or you’d never leave your house. 

The New York Times apparently wants us to have smartphones that prompt you to make sure you want to turn them on, prompt you to make sure you want to open an app, prompt you to make sure you want to send a tweet, prompt you to make sure you want to jump from an app to a web page, prompt you to make sure you want to adjust the brightness (a stranger may be able to read your phone more easily over your shoulder!!).

We’re one step away from a call for apps that prompt you if you’d like a prompt about something. Excuse me while I go hide in a hut in the woods and write a manifesto. 

imskyhigh: Simple | Worry-free Alternative to Traditional Banking

imskyhigh:

Simple | Worry-free Alternative to Traditional Banking

Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices

The year was 2008. I was at an event focused on mobile, sitting in on a roundtable discussion with several folks from key companies in the industry. One gentleman was from Adobe. The iPhone had launched the previous year, famously without any support for Flash. A lot of folks were up in arms about this — including several at this table. The guy from Adobe assured everyone: mobile Flash would be coming soon. And it was going to be wonderful. The notion that Apple wouldn’t include it on the iPhone because of performance issues was pure hogwash.

The same thing was said in 2009.

The same thing was said in 2010.

The same thing was still being said in 2011.

So you’ll forgive me when I snicker a bit at the news tonight that Adobe plans to cease development of their Flash player for mobile devices. Jason Perlow has the scoop for ZDNet, and it’s a doozy. Here’s the apparent forthcoming announcement from Adobe on the matter:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

This announcement, along with talk of a focus on HTML5, should be out in the next day or so, according to Perlow. Yes, Adobe is ending their efforts to get Flash onto mobile devices.

For your reference, here are Steve Jobs original thoughts on flash from April of 2010.

An excerpt:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 250,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010