Hasta La Gadget!

The retro-looking Flip Mino from 2008 contained 2 GB of memory for storing up to one hour of video. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division.

That’s a shame, considering how high the Flip was flying a few short years ago. It’s also a waste, considering that Cisco bought Flip from Pure Digital only two years ago for a cool $590 million. But Cisco probably had to act fast, because its earnings fell 18 percent in the second quarter of 2011, and CEO John Chambers had to show he was doing something decisive to stanch the flow.

It’s not like the Flip was doing that well of late. When was the last time you saw someone actually using one of these low-quality, “good-enough” Flips? Probably about two years ago.

Just what murdered those cheap, adorable camcorders? The obvious culprit is the general-purpose smartphone. When iPhones and Android phones began shipping with decent cameras for shooting stills, the Flip seemed excessive. When phones got HD video recording, the Flip was downright redundant.

But the smartphone wasn’t the sole cause of the Flip’s fate. The Flip would still be around if Cisco had bothered at all to adapt to the market. After all, there are plenty of camera businesses like Canon that are still alive and well.

Here are a few reasons why the Flip flopped.

Smarter General-Purpose Devices

Let’s get the obvious reason out of the way first. When Steve Jobs introduced the camera-equipped iPod Nano in 2009, he made it clear that the Flip budget camcorder was Apple’s primary target.

“We want to get in on this,” said Jobs regarding the budget-camera industry, while showing a slide of the Flip at the 2009 iPod event.

Why buy a cheap camcorder if you could buy an iPod Nano that shot video, too? In addition to the Nano, Apple had already released the iPhone 3GS, also capable of capturing standard-definition video.

Eventually, a slew of Android smartphones also shipped with video-capable cameras, and so did Apple’s iPod Touch. The iPhone 4 and others brought HD video recording to smartphones, eliminating the Flip’s last possible advantage. Suddenly, the notion of carrying around a cheap camcorder in addition to a general-purpose smartphone or iPod seemed impractical — extra bulk in your pocket. A slew of general-purpose devices made the Flip irrelevant.

The Shift to Real-Time Social Networking

The Flip probably wouldn’t have been murdered so easily if Cisco had caught on to something that’s been trendy for years: real-time social networking. To make that work, the Flip would have required an internet connection.

You’d think that would be an easy addition, considering that Cisco is a networking company.

After Apple released the video-equipped iPhone 3GS, Cisco should’ve quickly shipped a Wi-Fi–enabled Flip for customers to immediately shoot and post media on social networking sites such as Flickr and YouTube.

Instead, existing Flip camcorders require a wired connection to a PC in order to transfer the files and upload them to a website. That’s old-school, PC-centric social networking. These days, people like to share their media wherever they are, when it’s happening. Because the Flip lacked a wireless connection to the internet, this was another reason to just buy a smartphone.

Here’s where the Flip had a chance to survive. Kids love social networking and sharing pics and video, and they can’t afford smartphone plans. An affordable, cheap camera with an internet connection would’ve been pretty compelling.

Furthermore, Flip customers didn’t particularly have anywhere they belonged to feel special. Cisco could’ve bolstered an internet-enabled Flip with a unique social network made just for Flip users.

To be fair, evidence shows Cisco was trying to ship a Wi-Fi–enabled Flip, but it moved too slowly. At this point, smartphones are already too far ahead, with popular social media apps such as Instagram and Ustream making them even cooler.

No Compelling High-End Option

Cisco’s line of “high-end” Flip products are yawn-inducing. The high-end Slide HD ($230) includes 16 GB of storage, 720p video and 2x video zoom. For the same price, a low-end iPod Touch includes 8 GB of storage, 720p video, an internet connection and access to hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store. Which would you choose?

If Cisco had focused on optimizing the high end of its Flip camera line, it would’ve offered a compelling reason to buy a Flip versus a smartphone or iPod.

Imagine a high-end Flip with a Wi-Fi or 3G internet connection, 1080p video, a decent zoom lens, and a touchscreen with apps made just for Flip video and photo. A solid, premium multimedia device would’ve enabled Flip to stand out among the “jack-of-all-trades” multifunction devices out there.

But alas, the Flip is dead. RIP, Flip.

Some iPhone apps ask you for permission to track your geographical location. However, some apps pull such data without your approval. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

If people want to know everything about you, they need look no further than your smartphone. It contains a host of your personal information and leaves a trail of digital footprints everywhere you go.

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges that Apple and a handful of app makers are invading user privacy by accessing personal data from customers’ smartphones without permission and sharing it with third-party advertisers.

Concurrently, federal prosecutors in New Jersey are investigating whether several smartphone app makers, including Pandora, are transmitting customer information without proper disclosure. Separately, Congress is mulling legislation aimed at giving consumers the option to tell companies not to track their personal data.

“I’m glad this is coming to light, because I think consumers are waking up to the tracking that’s going on with a computer, but I think there’s an extreme lack of knowledge about the tracking on your iPhone or your iPad,” said Sharon Nissim, consumer privacy counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is not involved in the lawsuit.

Plaintiffs Natasha Acosta and Dolma Acevedo-Crespo on April 7 filed a civil complaint against Apple and eight companies providing iPhone or iPad apps, accusing them of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by intentionally accessing customer information without their authorization. The complaint seeks class-action status on behalf of every iPhone or iPad user who has installed one of the defendant’s apps over the last four years.

Well-known apps named in the lawsuit, which was filed in the district of Puerto Rico, include music-streaming service Pandora, and Dictionary.com.

The complaint accuses both Dictionary.com and Pandora [.pdf] of sharing an iPhone user’s unique device identifier, age, gender and location with third parties, including advertisers. Neither Pandora nor Dictionary.com are services that rely on location, the complaint notes.

The lawsuit cites as evidence an ongoing independent investigation by The Wall Street Journal, which tested 101 apps and found that 56 transmitted the phone’s UDID to third parties without user awareness or consent.

An iPhone does not transmit a customer’s real name, but Apple and third-party apps can identify a device with a string of unique numbers, known as the unique device identifier (UDID).

The problem is, with a UDID and other personal information such as location, age and gender data, a company could easily piece together the real identity of a smartphone user and sell that information to marketers, explained John Nevares, a lawyer representing the class-action complaint.

“When you put those together they’re able to transfer to a third party all your personal information so they can contact you later on and try to sell you something,” Nevares said. He added that this type of activity constitutes fraud and deceptive practices.

EPIC’s Nissim echoed Nevares’ concerns.

“There hasn’t been a lot of recognition that that type of identified number should be treated as personally identifiable information,” Nissim said. “If it’s combined with other information it could be used to identify you, and it becomes a gold mine of data for advertisers.”

Also as a result of The Wall Street Journal’s investigation, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to multiple iPhone and Android app makers, including Pandora and Anthony Campiti, creator of the Pumpkin Maker iPhone app. Pumpkin Maker, which is also named in the New Zealand class-action complaint, is an app that allows customers to carve virtual jack-o’-lanterns. The WSJ found that this app shares UDID and location data with advertisers.

The federal investigation is significant, because it could result in criminal charges against companies accused of committing fraud, the WSJ notes. However, it’s rare that companies get charged with criminal offenses, so the investigation may evolve into a civil issue, meaning companies could be forced to pay monetary damages and promise to cease these practices.

“They’re just doing information-gathering to get a better understanding” of the industry, Campiti told WSJ. “We’re not doing anything wrong and neither is anyone else doing anything wrong.”

Apple declined to comment on this story.

However, an Apple spokeswoman referred Wired.com to Apple’s privacy policy, which states, “We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising.”

Issues of mobile privacy are not unique to the United States. In Germany, politician and privacy advocate Malte Spitz sued his carrier, Deutsche Telekom, to get all the information it had on him.

The telecom giant handed over to Spitz a gigantic file revealing it had tracked him 35,000 times between August 2009 and February 2010 — enough data points for German newspaper Die Zeit to compile an interactive map and video tracking his every move for six months.

In response to the Spitz incident, two U.S. Congressmen are urging American phone companies AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile to disclose their data collection practices.

See Also:

• Google Privacy Practices Worse Than ISP Snooping, AT&T Charges
• Learn About Privacy Issues in Networked: Carabella on the Run
• How to Handle Facebook Privacy Settings for Your Kids

Researchers transformed the iPad 2 into a 3-D display using its front-facing camera

Turns out you don’t need a special display to get 3-D images and effects on a tablet like Apple’s iPad 2.

Thanks to the new iPad’s front-facing camera, researchers at France’s Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Research Group have been able to deliver real-time glasses-free 3-D using some clever head-tracking software.

The system is named “Head-Coupled Perspective” and works by following your head movements to provide a 3-D image that extends into the screen rather than towards your face, somewhat like looking through a window. It could also be applied to other Apple devices that sport a front-facing camera, like the iPhone 4.

In the past, there have been applications that use the iPad as a tool for 3-D modeling, as well as iPhone apps and gaming accessories that provide 3-D effects, with varying degrees of success. Johnny Chung Lee also created a similar, albeit more hardware intensive head-tracking system that used a Wiimote and IR-outfitted safety glasses.

Head-Coupled Perspective exists only as a tech demo for now, but may get turned into a full-fledged iOS app at some point.

iPad 2 Gets Glasses-free 3D Display [TUAW]

The inundation of tablets upon these very pages from day to day should give you an idea that manufacturers see this as a golden opportunity to grab a big chunk of a fledgling market. According to Gartner, though, the prospects are a little less rosy — for the next five years, anyway. Analyst estimates indicate that the tablet market will boom over the next five years, from 17,610,000 units last year to 294,093,000 in 2015. No, not 294,092,000. 294,093,000. Apple will be the dominant force, its market share not dropping below 50 percent until the terminal year of this study. Android will take up the lion share of the other half, with the remaining dredges shared by MeeGo, WebOS, and QNX. The latter, which powers RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook, is scheduled to have a 10 percent share. That’ll be the closest thing to a threat that Google and Apple will face — if you believe any of this.

Update: The figures above are in thousands of units.

Gartner: Apple will dominate tablet space for years, Android won’t drink its milkshake until after 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a familiar face, sure, but there’s a key ingredient thrown here that’s been lacking on JBL’s prior iDevice docks: AirPlay. We’re still waiting (and waiting) to see if Apple’s going to expand its licensing program to allow third-party vendors the ability to toss in AirPlay video streaming, but for now, JBL’s taking advantage of what’s out there. The On Air Wireless AirPlay speaker dock — which is shipping today to Best Buy and Apple Stores after being teased a few weeks ago — is now good and official, enabling consumers to wirelessly stream their iTunes library from Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPods or iPads right to the dock. Aside from a rather unorthodox design (which should go a long way to dispersing jams in a 360-degree fashion), you’ll also find a color LCD, digital FM radio, an inbuilt alarm clock, DSP technology and a proprietary adapter that enables it to be worn as headgear at your next rave. We’re guessing that final bit makes the $349.99 price tag entirely more palatable.

Continue reading JBL ships AirPlay-enabled On Air speaker dock, charges stiff premium for wireless luxury

JBL ships AirPlay-enabled On Air speaker dock, charges stiff premium for wireless luxury originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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