Orb, a $9.99 iPhone application that should be familiar to home networking buffs, is available now and will stream music from your home computer, photos, and live television from a TV tuner card - all over the Internet. It can even stream input from a webcam to your phone.
Source: John Biggs
The calendar now reads November 21st and, just as expected, iPhone firmware 2.2 has been released to the masses. Seeing as a pretty good number of developers have had their hands on test versions of 2.2 for sometime now, and as NDAs generally turn to pudding after a few hundred people are in on the secret, we’ve had a pretty good idea of what this release would bring to the table for a while.
For the sake of those who may have missed a day or two, though, we’ll recap: Safari’s address bar/search has been tweaked a bit, apps now request a rating upon deletion, over-the-air podcast downloads (which, oddly, works over 3G, though podcasts downloaded over radio can’t be over a certain size, determined by the carrier), various video and audio quality tweaks, and assorted bug fixes throughout. Oh, and Google Maps has been upgraded to include Street View and directions for public transit and walking - if you have an iPhone rather than an iPod Touch, that is.
Source: Greg Kumparak
Each month, AdMob, a mobile advertising network, rounds up the data from over 6,000 mobile websites and applications, analyzes it all, and releases their findings in their Mobile Metrics Report. In the September report, AdMob determined that the iPhone had become the #4 handset worldwide by count of ads requested. In the October release, the iPhone has skyrocketed all the way to #1.
Note that these rankings are not directly representative of sales numbers; while AdMob’s ad network is wide enough that these numbers can provide an accurate picture of usage trends, they don’t necessarily prove that one handset is outselling another.
September vs October Worldwide handset rankings:
Within the Top 5, the only major change is the iPhones sudden surge. Below that however, notice the BlackBerry 8100s sudden disappearance from the list - it has shifted down to #11, sitting just below the BlackBerry 8300. Why might this be? Well, the 8100 is a good half year older than the 8300 - chances are, more 8100s are reaching retirement.
September vs October US handset rankings:
In September, we were a bit surprised to see the iPhone sitting all the way down at #7 in the US while it managed to snag the #4 spot worldwide. In October, the iPhone’s rank seems a bit more well aligned with it’s worldwide status, coming in at #2. iPhone requests have more than doubled, allowing it to knock the KRZR down a notch. The rest of the list moves in relation, though as with the worldwide rankings, we see the BlackBerry 8300 climb as the 8100 sinks.
One thing to note with all of these statistics, however, is that AdMob advertisements embedded into iPhone applications are counted alongside web site statistics. If these same advertisements are not embedded into applications on all of the other platforms, wouldn’t the numbers be skewed in favor of the iPhone? Even if they were given the same real estate across all platforms, third-party applications are a far more significant part of the iPhone than they are of the vast majority of devices; if you own an iPhone, chances are great that you’ve installed (and regularly use) a handful of applications. Can you really say the same about the KRZR, or the Kyocera K24? Wouldn’t this, too, skew things a bit? I’d be interested in seeing how the data changes when limited to any website accessible by smartphone.
Other interesting tid bits from the report:
If you’ve got a couple hours to kill tearing through page upon page of statistics (now including stats for Latin America!), you can find the full report here.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Greg Kumparak
Well, it happened. Google’s voice recognition mobile app finally arrived today on the iPhone App Store. Until today all we had to go by was the demo video that Google created showing it in action.
And that video shows something that quite simply changes the way I’d use the phone. Instead of clicking buttons on the virtual keyboard to search the web or my contacts, I’d just hit a button and use the Google Mobile App. And it really is just one button - it knows, via the accelerometer, when you put the phone to your ear and when you take it away. Voila! Cool stuff happens.
Here’s the video, narrated by Mike LeBeau on the Google Mobile team:
Let’s compare that video to my actual results. First, the big letdown is that you can’t search contacts by voice - you have to type for that, and it’s not really worth using the app just to do that when the normal contact application works just as well.
Also, it’s important that there is very little background noise when you use the app. A steady hum from an electric heater six feet away from me confounded the app on speakerphone. The noise from a car, certainly, will prohibit speakerphone usage while driving. The results below were done in a silent room with the phone held up to my ear, and I spoke as clearly as I am able. The demo results are shown on the left, my actual results are on the right.
First query: Pictures of the Golden Gate bridge at sunset: Results were perfect.
Second Query: How big is a giant squid?: Crazy results - I got “public citizen times square”
Third Query: Movie Showtimes: Results were perfect, and it used my location
25 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit: Results were perfect
The contact search also went exactly as the video showed, but it’s a little misleading. You can’t search contacts by voice, only by typing. The video shows that, but by that point you’re all hopped up on voice goodness and you don’t really realize that its all typing at that point, which is little better than using the normal contact app that comes with the phone.
Overall, other than the one snafu with the giant squid, everything went well. But the voice recognition is far from perfect, as the demo video suggests. And the limitation on contact search is a letdown.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Michael Arrington
Google’s voice recognition search application for the iPhone, originally set for launch on Friday, will likely go live sometime Monday, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the situation.
Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.
Who knows why Apple delayed the application, or why they tend to treat every application developer equally poorly.
But in this case Apple really screwed up in our opinion.
If the application is half as good as the demo video shows, Google has done something pretty amazing with voice recognition and mobile platforms. This application will, quite simply, sell iPhones. Lots of them.
Google faced a decision on which mobile platform to first launch the application - the iPhone or their own Android. The fact that they decided to launch first on the iPhone shows a willingness to embrace what’s right for the user, and it’s something that few other companies would have done. Google could have launched for the Android first and pushed sales of phones on their platform. They didn’t, and Apple should have embraced them for that.
Next time I expect Google won’t be so trusting. And I don’t blame them.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: Michael Arrington
Users of the voice technology can ask any question, ranging from “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” to “How tall is Mount Everest?”
Source: By JOHN MARKOFF
Users of the voice technology can ask any question, ranging from “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” to “How tall is Mount Everest?”
Source: By JOHN MARKOFF
When it comes to charging for mobile apps, payments usually have to go through either the carriers or one of the emerging mobile app platforms such as Apple or Google’s Android. The problem with charging for an iPhone app through iTunes is that Apple takes 30 percent. A startup called Billing Revolution wants to charge about one tenth as much for a seamless, mobile one-click shopping experience. Already available on other phones, Billing Revolution is announcing availability today for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps.
Once a consumer signs up to pay for things through Billing Revolution, he is presented with an Amazon-like one-click payment option no matter what app is using it. (Didn’t Amazon patent that?). Billing Revolution charges a 3.5 percent transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction.
Source: Erick Schonfeld