Hasta La Gadget!

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) can’t be everywhere at once, so it’s crowd-sourcing the weather report with a new app called mPING. More »

Pebble, the smart watch that set the world on fire with its Kickstarter project, is already encountering a few growing pains as its device begins to trickle out to the earliest backers. Chief among those issues is a problem that sees iOS notifications for email turn off whenever an iPhone or iPod touch has its Bluetooth connection interrupted. Problems are also cropping up around different Android OEMs and the stock email apps they use not necessarily being compatible with Pebble, iOS caller ID issues and differing support for various Android ROMs, among others.

Pebble itself acknowledged these and other issues in an email to Kickstarter project supporters today, identifying which issues they’re working on and what their top priorities are. The iOS email problem, which can be fixed somewhat with an awkward workaround. Pebble says that they’ve talked about this problem with Apple’s developer support department, but doesn’t think that that’s necessarily a route they can expect a solution from anytime soon. Instead, they say finding a solution is their “#1 priority iOS task,” and they’re currently looking to gather feedback from the iOS user pool to help them address it.

Other issues highlighted in the email include problems like HTC and Samsung devices not delivering email notifications to the Pebble properly from the default email apps used by those OEMs, Pebble interfering with proper Siri functionality on iOS and more. Here’s a complete list, as quoted from the email sent by the Pebble team.

• Email notifications from the default email app on HTC and some other Android devices are not being delivered to Pebble yet. On other default email apps (Samsung in particular) do not transmit email contents. Working on it.
• Some Pebbles are rebooting after receiving some notifications. If this happens to you regularly, use the Contact or Email support button inside the app to send us debug logs.
• iOS Caller ID. We’ve identified a bug that prevents a caller’s name from appearing on Pebble. Will have a fix in the next iOS Pebble App version.
• Android two factor authentication – click here for instructions
• Watchfaces not loading on iOS. Fixed in the next version of the iOS app.
• Battery indicator: we’re seeing reports of Pebble battery lasting from 2-7 days. It seems to be related to the variety of different Bluetooth connections on different phones. The first thing we’re working on is improving the battery logging and how Pebble alerts you when the battery is almost empty. Then we’ll move to improving battery life across the board.
• Android ROMs: we’ll do our best, but unfortunately we cannot promise support for the entire wide world of Andriod ROMs out there. We’re testing with stock devices from HTC, Samsung, Nexus (among others) and always on the stock OS.- Pebble seems to interfere with Siri on iOS devices. Working on this problem.

Issues are to be expected with a device that’s so new to market, and essentially just reaching its first users now. But many of these involve basic Pebble functionality, including the ability to transmit information from your phone to your watch about basic things like incoming calls and email. And the battery issues are another core element of the watch’s appeal, and one which users are likely to find fairly disappointing.

More worrying than these are issues that don’t seem to have an imminent solution. Pebble says it will fix some of these issues in the next update for iOS, including the caller ID problem and the issue around being able to change watch faces, but other things like the Siri interference and Bluetooth connection problems don’t have any kind of projected timeline for a solution. And the Android fragmentation problem is one even Pebble admits is too big to ever completely tackle.

My Pebble is still in the mail, so I’m reserving judgement on the device until I can actually get to try it out, but these early problems aren’t that encouraging. At least the team seems intent on addressing the issues to the best of their ability early, which could help get things ironed out before the Pebble is in the hands of more actual users.

Finding a Taxi in New York City isn’t that difficult of an experience if you know where Taxis usually travel and congregate. But for out-of-towners, it could be a confusing and frustrating experience, which makes mobile apps dedicated to hunting down Taxis even more important in major cities.

TomTom introduced a new taxi hailing service last September in Amsterdam that allowed travelers to call for a taxi from specific terminals. The idea was a good one, although finding a terminal while you’re head is spinning from binge drinking might be a challenge. That’s why TomTom is introducing an iPhone app that allows people to use its taxi hailing service right from their phone.

(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: 5-inch Samsung Full HD AMOLED Panel Begins Mass Production In February?, Samsung Galaxy S4 Arrives This March 15th, Goes On Sale In April (Rumor),

This week the development team at BlackBerry working with the new mobile OS BlackBerry 10 have confirmed that they’ll be updating Android app integration from version 2.3 Gingerbread all the way up to 4.1 Jelly Bean. This Runtime for Android toolset takes what we know about Android app integration in BlackBerry 10 and moves it forward to apps being developed for the newest Android systems rather than Android 2.3 Gingerbread. This Gingerbread version of Android is, if you did not know, a version of Google mobile OS over 2 generations old – it’s high time!

This update will allow easier and better pathways for Android developers hoping to move in to the BlackBerry 10 environment in 2013 without a doubt, and while we’re still not solid on the exact release date of the BlackBerry 10 Android Runtime update that we’re talking about here, a “TBD” date is certainly more encouraging than no word at all. In a Planning stage at the moment, this Jelly Bean update for Android Runtime will, the BlackBerry team hopes, “support all current features and APIs available on the Android Runtime platform today.” BlackBerry also notes that they’ll be evaluating their ability to integrate new features revealed between here and the Jelly Bean upgrade as well.

This release bodes well for BlackBerry 10 because it allows Android developers to create their Android apps as they normally would and port them to BlackBerry 10 with great ease. The tools that BlackBerry offers to developers across the board are both free and intuitive, working with processes that take each Android buttons, gesture, device sensor, and more and connect them to their BlackBerry 10 equivalent. BlackBerry hopes that their already massively successful (so to speak) campaign to help Android developers into the BlackBerry 10 environment will continue through the actual full launch of the system.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more big BlackBerry 10 developments that’ll have this mobile OS taking off into outer space (or so BlackBerry hopes) when this early Spring market push begins. You’ll find that BlackBerry is working with more than just Android developers and with more than just software tools to make the app universe inside BlackBerry a success. It’s there that a system must grow from – without seeds to have no flowers!

[via CrackBerry]

BlackBerry 10 Android Jelly Bean integration confirmed is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s official: BlackBerry 10’s Android runtime layer will be updated to Jelly Bean. Reports of the announcement, which should please users looking to shore up the platform’s app selection, surfaced this morning, apparently stemming from the company’s developer-focused BB Jam Europe event in Amsterdam. We’ve since reached out and received confirmation that it is indeed true, although no timetable has yet to be announced. In the meantime, current Z10 owners can continue to sideload Gingerbread-based apps — which the runtime layer currently supports — while they wait for those big name, third-party apps to land in the BlackBerry World store.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Software, Mobile, Blackberry

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Via: CrackBerry