Hasta La Gadget!

TigerText is an iPhone application which promises to delete text messages from the receiver’s phone after a set period. Billed as a tool for adulterers (classy!), the application kinda works, provided you’re loose enough with your definition of “text message”.

Despite the PR pitches, the application has nothing to do with SMS messages. Instead, TigerText users can send messages to each other using TigerText, and specify a valid period for each message. After this time is up, the message is deleted from the TigerText servers and therefore from both sending and receiving iPhones. You can also choose to have the message vanish as soon as it has been read, in a kind of modern-day Mission Impossible homage.

This is fine for pre-arranged clandestine communications, but has the same problem found with any service like this: the recipient needs to install software. And if they don’t have it, they will get a regular SMS prompting them to install it, a very annoying “feature.”

If you can get friends to sign up, it is at least a cheap SMS alternative. The app is free, and you get 100 messages when you install it (valid for 15 days). After the trial period you can buy 250 messages for $1.50, or pay $2.50 for unlimited texting. Receiving messages is always free, and the application also works fine on the iPod Touch. Now you just need to make sure you never go home with lipstick on your collar.

TigerText [iTunes. Thanks, Jeff!]

Everyone seems to rave about Twitter but they are not the only kids on the block anymore.

Back in December, Ameba, a Japanese blog service with seven million users, launched a free new micro-blogging service for its members, Ameba Now (Ameba なう). Just like tweeting, you have 140 characters to tell the world what you are doing, and can also upload images.

Significantly, though, Ameba has integrated its trademark cute emoji into the messages that users can post. Given that Twitter doesn’t have this function so beloved by Japanese users, could it give Ameba Now the edge over its American rival? It was also launched first as a mobile site, then onto PCs a few days after. (Twitter did not have a mobile version until a year after its launch.) Ameba Now, like Ameba itself, has attracted a good contingent of popular Japanese geinoujin and celebrities (below is the account for model Yuka Hiura), bringing with them fans and publicity.

February 24 saw the news that there had been a million unique users on Ameba Now in January alone, and that 54% of them were female. Twitter is said to have 4.7 million users, so it probably won’t lose much sleep just yet. However, the balance of tweeters in Japan is weighted towards male users, with 64% of the share. The number of visits in January per person was not dissimilar either: 3.3 (Ameba Now) versus 3.9 (Twitter), though users were on Twitter for much longer (a total of over 25 minutes versus just under 7 minutes for Ameba Now).

Before we reject Twitter as a foreign upstart and past its prime, let’s remember there is more to these micro-blogging services than just celebrities or personal messages.

The Nikkei Marketing Journal reported recently about sushi chain restaurants using Twitter to harness word-of-mouth marketing and build up their consumer base. At the beginning of February Sushi Tokoro Saisho had a promotion rewarding customers who tweeted their visit to the restaurant, with the discount calculated at one yen off per Twitter follower (i.e. a 100 JPY [US$1.1] discount if you have 100 followers). Apparently this led to over 1000 tweets about the restaurant.

Toy store Sugorokuya also did a similar campaign from late January to early February, and saw the number of customers visiting increase by 30-40%.

Twitter may not have the emoji or the female users, but for marketing it is perhaps still winning this minor micro-blog war.

Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) went into meltdown this weekend, logging users out of the service and preventing them from playing online games. That alone would be inconvenient, but users, including our own Brian X. Chen, are reporting that previously downloaded games — including Heavy Rain — cannot be played offline, and that trophies won in games have disappeared from the console.

Sony is aware of the problem, posting updates on both its PS3 blog and Twitter stream. Oddly, the issue is confined to the original big PS3s: The PS3 Slim remains unaffected by the problem.

Although Sony says it will have a fix by this morning, it has not yet said what went wrong. Anecdotal evidence points to a combination of DRM and firmware issues rather than a network outage. Affected units have their system date set to Dec. 31, 1999 (something impossible to do manually, according to PS3 News) or Jan. 1, 2000, and the consoles are only able to play non-protected games.

This, combined with errors such as the following:

8001050F – Hardware failure. Cannot update Firmware or connect to Internet

make us think that a firmware bug screwed up the date and/or connectivity, and the games’ DRM is thrown into a panic as a result. If this is true, it’s embarrassing for Sony. The other possibility is that the trophy syncing itself is breaking the games: games try to sync trophy info and refuse to work when they can’t. Non-trophy-based titles such as Metal Gear Solid 4 are unaffected.

We’ll keep an eye on this, and we’re sure that Sony’s PSN engineers aren’t getting much sleep tonight. If any readers are experiencing the same issues, let us know in the comments.

Update: Sony has posted an update, explaining that “this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.” The company said it is hoping to resolve the issue in the next 24 hours. Sony advises owners of the non-slim PS3 to avoid using their systems until the bug is fixed.

PSN Crashed: 8001050F – Hardware Failure for PS3 Consoles [PS3 News]

Sony Twitter Feed [Twitter]

Sony: PSN fix by morning [The Examiner]

PlayStation Network Corrupted, Prevents Offline Play Worldwide [PC World]

This isn’t the 80s anymore. It’s not good enough to just pump out lusty hardware like the Walkman in order to drive generous profit streams. In the modern age of consumer electronics, it takes content and an entire ecosystem of software and services to keep customers locked in and buying your gear. That’s why we’re paying close attention to content deals for the suddenly hot tablet category of devices. Conde Nast has been teasing custom content for next generation tablets for months, lead by mock-ups of its Wired magazine property. So it’s no surprise to hear Charles H. Townsend, president and CEO of Conde Nast say he wants to “take a leadership position,” on Apple’s iPad. According to the New York Times, the company will announce plans today (via an internal company memo) for its first custom iPad digital pubs: the April issue of GQ (there’s already an iPhone app for that), followed by the June issues of Wired and Vanity Fair, and then The New Yorker and Glamour sometime in the summer. This first cut represents a broad swath of demographics as Conde Nast trials Apple’s newest platform in order to see what works. We should also expect a variety of prices and advertising models during the initial experimentation period. Also noteworthy is Conde Nast’s two-track development approach: the iPad version of Wired will be developed with Adobe (as we heard) but the others will be developed internally — all the digital mags will be available via iTunes although Wired will also be made available in “non-iTunes formats.” Assuming it finds a model that works, then Conde Nast plans to digitize other magazines in the fall.

Conde Nast stakes out ‘leadership position’ on iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Watch out now, Archos is about to bestow a whole new category of electronic device upon us. It’ll still be a tablet to the knowledgeable among us, but the rest of the world will know the Home Slate as an FDA — a family digital assistant. Listed on CeBIT’s exhibitor guide, this new multimedia player cum home organizer will offer WiFi connectivity and a web browser along with the usual suite of photo, video and music playback options. We’d heard earlier that Archos was planning new tablets aimed specifically at in-home use, and the A70HB model number here would suggest that this might be the rumored Archos 7 Android tablet pictured above. Whether it be 7 inches or 17, you can rest assured we’ll be digging this up at CeBIT shortly to figure out if those family-assisting features are worthy of the highfalutin marketing that accompanies them.

[Thanks, David V.]

Archos Home Slate set to grace CeBIT with its family-friendly presence originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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