Our digital world ……
“Chrome for Android has been updated today, and along with improved scrolling and startup performance, there’s also a pretty cool new feature — support for WebRTC. WebRTC is a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications capabilities via some simple Javascript APIs.”
“Alright, so you’ve waded through the native app versus responsive website debate and based on the needs for your needs and your business, you decide you need a native app. The next thing to figure out is the age-old question: “iOS or Android?””
“For his opening statements in the Google Q2 2013 earnings call, CEO Larry Page took a minute to remind us the number of Android devices that are out there today.”
“With the white Google Nexus 4 yesterday being confirmed as ‘sold out’ on the Google Play store, the LG manufactured handset has now started to disappear from retailers, suggesting a replacement could be on the way in the form of the much rumoured Google Nexus 5.”
“In the midst of the PRISM-related spying scandals, DuckDuckGo launched its mobile apps, with an Android client already available free of charge for users. The app, called DuckDuckGo Search & Stories, offers both search support but also a way to stay on top of the news by offering relevant stories.”
“Google’s got an Android problem, and a big one. And it’s a problem Google shares with us fans of Google content-delivering services, such as Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Google+ and others.”
Well, this is exciting. We knew it was only a matter of time before El Goog decided to get into the music streaming biz, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the company is currently in talks with several record labels to fire up a Spotify-esque service.
If true, the service is said to become part of Google Music, which only makes sense. Currently, Music allows users upload their own music libraries and stream them from any web browser or Android device, and the addition of a streaming service would likely give users access to unlimited music outside of that collection for a monthly fee. While Spotify and similar services cost around $10 a month, it’s unclear at this time how much Big G would be charging, but it’s probably safe to assume it will be very competitively priced, if not even cheaper.
Similarly, the WSJ is also reporting that the company is looking to start a similar service on YouTube, where users can pay a monthly fee for both music videos and audio-only tracks.
Naturally, there’s no word as to when either service could go live, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Google could be looking to conclude talks in the coming weeks and announce official availability at this year’s I/O conference.
WSJ
via Android Police
SUMMARY:
Verizon is now reviewing iPhone and Android apps, but not based on how fun or useful they are. It’s concerned about the resources they consume, which means Facebook and many popular games get docked.Verizon Wireless may have shut down its own app store, but it’s not wiping its hands of app curation entirely. The carrier has started reviewing, rating and recommending Android and iPhone apps to its customers.
What’s interesting about Verizon’s approach is it isn’t making its recommendations based on how entertaining, useful or fun a particular app is. Instead a team of Verizon engineers is looking at each app’s impact on the phone’s battery life, its drain on a customer’s data plan and how loosely it plays with security and customer privacy.
Basically, Verizon is compiling a series of regularly updated recommendation lists. The first is a list of 20 apps available either for Android or iOS that Verizon claims deliver a “best in class” experience on smartphones and tablets. As you might expect, Verizon isn’t being entirely objective in its choices, but it never claimed to be. One of the apps is even Verizon’s own AppLuvr software, which recommends other apps based on what’s already installed on smartphones.
The second list applies a much more visible methodology, rating the top 25 free and top 25 paid apps in Google Play based on three criteria: security, battery consumption and data usage. The third set of reviews is essentially Verizon’s naughty list: 13 apps – all games – that will drain your battery or eat up your data plan at a rapid clip.
Verizon isn’t making any friends here among the game development shops. Enormously popular games like Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja Free and OMGPOP’s Draw Something got bad marks because of their battery drain. Other apps like Facebook Messenger and eBay scored relatively high but were penalized because of their high data consumption.
That may come us a surprise to many users since Facebook and eBay wouldn’t appear to consume that much data, especially compared to streaming multimedia apps like Pandora and Netflix, which received the highest possible Verizon ratings. But what Verizon is likely highlighting here is the persistence of those two apps’ connections. While Facebook might consume only a tiny fraction of the data in a single hour than, say, a Netflix video stream, the social networking app is always running in the background – transmitting a constant stream of signaling traffic over the network and whittling away at your data plan.
Alcatel-Lucent recently analyzed the enormous impact Facebook has on mobile networks through that signaling traffic. On Nov. 15, the social networking giant updated its iOS and Android apps, precipitating a 60 percent boost in Facebook signal load on mobile networks, even though the number of new Facebook mobile users increased only 4 percent in the same time frame. Alcatel-Lucent now estimates that Facebook is responsible for more than 15 percent of all mobile signaling traffic and accounts for more than 20 percent of all network airtime.
Carriers have long implored developers to keep the constraints of mobile networks in mind and build more efficient apps. With these rankings Verizon could be upping that pressure, punishing developers who keep developing unnecessarily chatty software.
As you might expect, neither Facebook Messenger or the main Facebook app made Verizon’s list of “must have apps” (though eBay did). Verizon, however, named Facebook’s much more network-efficient Instagram photo-sharing app in its top 20. I doubt Facebook cares either way.
Any time a carrier produces a must-have list you should take it with a grain of salt, but I will give Verizon credit. It actually recommended Tango, an over-the-top voice, video and messaging app that competes directly with Verizon’s core voice and SMS services
via Which apps will drain your battery and data plan? Verizon’s got a list — Tech News and Analysis.
It can be easy to get “unlocking” and “jailbreaking” confused, but the two terms mean totally different things. Unlocking refers to freeing your phone to work on any carrier instead of just the one you bought it on. Jailbreaking is the process of circumventing Apple’s security measures in iOS to install tweaks, hacks, and mods that aren’t allowed in the App Store.
The U.S. Library of Congress has ruled that it is now illegal for you to unlock your smartphone if it was bought after January 26th, 2013. Carriers can still legally unlock your device for you, but it’s illegal to go through a third-party unlock vendor.
Jailbreaking your iPhone has been kept legal through 2015 under an exemption in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The crazy catch is that jailbreaking the iPad has technically been made illegal, while the iPhone and iPod touch both remain exempt. So jailbreaking is safe mostly, but unofficial unlocking is not. This is important to mention as the iOS 6.1 jailbreak approaches.
Keeping up with the U.S. legal system is very confusing, so what does all this unlocking and jailbreaking legal jargon mean for you?
“You’ll probably start seeing unlock vendors close up shop”
Unlocking has historically been a grey area for the U.S. government. Third-party companies have been making money selling cheap unlocks for smartphones without the carriers’ permission, and carriers don’t want customers unlocking their devices on the side. That means savvy customers could just switch service providers while they’re still under contract.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) weighed in on the DMCA’s recent banning of unofficial unlocking in a new blog post today:
While we don’t expect mass lawsuits anytime soon, the threat still looms. More likely, wireless carriers, or even federal prosecutors, will be emboldened to sue not individuals, but rather businesses that unlock and resell phones. If a court rules in favor of the carriers, penalties can be stiff – up to $2,500 per unlocked phone in a civil suit, and $500,000 or five years in prison in a criminal case where the unlocking is done for “commercial advantage.” And this could happen even for phones that are no longer under contract. So we’re really not free to do as we want with devices that we own.
Entities like ChronicUnlocks make good money selling unlocks on the cheap, and they work. ChronicUnlocks is perhaps the most legitimate third-party service, and it is currently not unlocking smartphones that were bought after the DMCA’s ruling went into effect last weekend. That’s a small group right now, but it will encompass many more people as new phones keep coming out.
While you won’t probably get sued for unlocking the iPhone you bought in 2013, you’ll probably start seeing unlock vendors close up shop. Or at least fade away. The Library of Congress won’t review the DMCA again until 2014, but there’s an online petition you can sign asking the White House to rescind the decision.
Jailbreaking the iPhone is totally legal still, which has never really been an issue in the past. There hasn’t been one notable U.S. lawsuit related to jailbreaking, so you don’t need to worry about the feds crashing through your door for installing Cydia. And the specific update to the legality of the iPad is really a non-issue. There hasn’t been a court case to specifically enforce a ban on any form of jailbreaking. It’s all up to the interpretation of the courts if someone decided to prosecute.
“keep calm and carry on”
“While a DMCA exemption is nice and all to tip the legal scales even more in favor of the jailbreakers, I don’t think they’re critical to the legality of jailbreaking,” said renowned jailbreak hacker David Wang (@planetbeing) in an email. Wang is currently working to release the public jailbreak for iOS 6.1. “I think jailbreaking is legal, with or without the DMCA exemption, so the lack of it does not significantly impact us, the people who develop jailbreak tools,” said Wang.
Jailbreaking your iOS device on your computer at home is totally safe. Some try to sell jailbreaking services on sites like Craigslist, and that could cause issues if iPads are involved. But there has been nothing in the history of jailbreaking to warrant concern at this point. Do as the British do: keep calm and carry on.
via Cult of Mac
Did you hop on the new Chrome beta track for Android? There’s a treat waiting under the hood. Google’s Brandon Jones has confirmed that the latest build enables the flags page, letting us toggle hidden elements — including the rather big deal of WebGL support. Anyone with reasonably quick graphics can now experiment with full 3D on their phone without having to hack or use a plugin, whether it’s wild music videos or lovefests. Just remember that the experience won’t be as seamless as it is on the desktop. You’ll likely have to force the desktop version of a page just to see the graphics code, and few if any WebGL developers are optimizing for the performance and screen size of a phone. If you’d still like to get a peek at what could be the future of the mobile web, hit the source to join the beta flock.
via Engadget
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