Hasta La Gadget!

Think Facebook chat is cool? How’s about a billion Facebook chats… with your voice. A company by the name of Crisp App has just pushed out an iOS program that may or may not be pulled at any time. You see, the app essentially enables iPod touch and iPhone users to call their Facebook friends (even if they’re logged on via the web) using a VoIP protocol, but there doesn’t appear to be any affiliation with Zuckerberg and co. It also allows chatters to shoot over pictures, browse message history, view a friend’s wall, use emoticons, receive instant replies with Apple Push Notifications and setup sound notifications. Naturally, it supports background operation, but according to GigaOM, there’s still a significant amount of lag present while calling. Still, if you spend more time on Facebook than digging through your standard contact list, you may want to part ways with $2.99 now and pray for a fix in the future — we get the feeling that time’s ticking on this one.

Facebook Messenger iPhone app gives you yet another VoIP option, Zuckerberg yet another good idea originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Growth. You don’t have to be Gordon Gekko to recognize that exponential growth in revenues is the mark of both a buoyant industry and, on an individual level, a healthy participant within it. Kudos must, therefore, be handed out to all the top four app stores globally, as each one expended its total revenues by over 130 percent between 2009 and 2010. Interestingly, Apple’s growth looks to be slowing down as the App Store begins to reach a saturation point on smartphones, while Nokia’s Ovi Store and Google’s Android Market blossomed during 2010 by multiples of 7.2 and 8.6 times their 2009 size. Apple’s share at the top has shrunken as a consequence, a trend that looks likely to continue when Windows Phone 7’s Marketplace and the Ovi Store are melded into one through this year and beyond.

Apple maintains lead in mobile app store revenues, but its share is shrinking fast originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that AT&T is no longer the exclusive provider of the iPhone, the telecom company’s CEO has taken the opportunity to speak out against Apple and the App Store.

In a keynote speech, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at Mobile World Congress criticized the closed nature of the App Store, whose offerings are exclusive to Apple devices.

“You purchase an app for one operating system, and if you want it on another device or platform, you have to buy it again,” Stephenson said in a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress. “That’s not how our customers expect to experience this environment.”

Stephenson’s suggestion? He wants carriers to have the ability to sell apps to customers directly through a channel called the Wholesale Applications Community, which serves software from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

In other words, Stephenson wants carriers to have some control of the mobile software experience. He probably misses the good old days when telecoms told manufacturers what they wanted on their phone software — before Steve Jobs negotiated for Apple to have complete control of the iPhone experience and blew up the wireless industry.

Cry me a river, AT&T.

Stephenson’s idea seems pretty self-serving for the telecoms. I don’t know anyone who misses expensive crapware made by carriers. I remember when I had a Motorola RAZR on Verizon, and there was a navigation app to get written directions from one location to another. The price? $10 per month. Absurd, and the demo was barely functional; Google later made the same service free with an SMS service. If telecoms did gain their own app channel on the iPhone and other smartphones, I’m betting nobody would be happy but the carriers.

From Loop Insight

If HP wants webOS to be a competitive mobile ecosystem, the platform’s app store has an awful lot of catching up to do — but in terms of raw features, it sounds like the company plans to get with the program soon. PreCentral attended a developer presentation at MWC 2011 where HP showed off a brand new version of the App Catalog specifically designed for the tablet-friendly webOS 3.0, and found it will come with a handful of features that should make it eminently more useful. As you can see in the image above, there are presently four tabs, but two of them are worth calling out: the “Browser” is said to be a magazine-like interface for browsing through apps, while the “Saved” tab lets you bookmark apps you’re interested in to consider for purchase or download later on. Perhaps more importantly, the process of actually paying for programs should be streamlined quite soon: HP told attendees that carrier billing and promo codes would find their way into the webOS App Catalog by summer at the very latest, in time for a webOS 3.0 launch, which suggests that it could possibly hit smartphones even a mite sooner.

HP revamping webOS App Catalog for tablet use, adding carrier billing and magazine-like view originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you weren’t aware, Apple’s newly launched App Store subscriptions aren’t sitting so well with everybody. While the functionality could of course be a boon to services that have struggled getting paying customers, folks who have already been doing just fine, thank you very much, are balking at the new restrictions Apple has imposed. Rhapsody has issued a statement, which says that it’s not going to play ball and even levels a bit of a threat: “We will be collaborating with our market peers in determining an appropriate legal and business response to this latest development.” The big trouble stems from the fact that Apple requires anybody offering a subscription service to offer that service for the same price or less through Apple. That means you can still sign up folks through your own methods and get all the cash, but if anybody signs up through your app, Apple gets a 30 percent cut. In addition, Apple is no longer allowing applications to include a link to an external site for purchasing, which means vendors will have trouble getting new users to pay them directly instead of using Apple’s simple but heavily-taxed option. Rhapsody claims that it can’t offer its services at existing prices with Apple grabbing that much of the revenue, and it sounds like Rhapsody will be leaving the App Store soon if an agreement isn’t struck.

Of course, this is just the shiny surface of the dirt Apple’s new policies have scuffed up, and we might even have an antitrust case on our hands, according to the Wall Street Journal. Check out the more coverage link for more on that, and follow after the break for Rhapsody’s statement in full.

Continue reading Rhapsody won’t bow to Apple’s subscription policy, issues statement

Rhapsody won’t bow to Apple’s subscription policy, issues statement originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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