Oct 03

Adobe Pushes Further Into Mobile with Suite of Touch-based Apps

Posted in: adobe, apps, photoshop, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Adobe unveiled Creative Cloud, a suite of apps and services for tablet-based creativity. Image: Adobe

Adobe unleashed a suite of services aimed at the growing mobile crowd at its Adobe MAX 2011 Conference today. The apps and services allow creative professionals and hobbyists to do what they do best without being tethered to traditional digital creative tools like desktops or laptop PCs.

It’s all part of Adobe’s so-called Creative Cloud initiative, which provides apps, services and (in the near future) a community surrounding them. Adobe will be releasing six iPad and Android touch apps for Creative Cloud, including Photoshop Touch, Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler and Proto. Adobe is also introduce Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, an iPad publishing platform for freelancers and small businesses.

The introduction of Adobe Photoshop Touch is especially exciting for aspiring artists who want to move away from using the usual digital tools. The app will feature Facebook and Google integration, as well as a tablet-only “Scribble Selection Tool” that will let users scribble on areas they want to keep or remove. The app syncs with Adobe’s “Creative Cloud” so files can be worked on both in the app or in Adobe’s Photoshop program on the desktop.

Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition will let designers use InDesign CS 5.5 to design page layouts, which they can then use to publish a single, custom iPad app.

It’s even more exciting for the non-iOS fans in the creative community. Although there are a number of drawing and vector graphics apps for the iPad, few have been ported over to the Android platform. Sketchbook Pro is one notable exception, as was Adobe’s Photoshop Express app. It’s a sign of Android’s success that a tablet-based app isn’t launching as an iPad exclusive.

Pricing for the entire Creative Cloud package will be announced in November, but the Single Edition Digital Publishing Suite will cost $400 and individual touch apps are $10 each.

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Oct 03

Apple’s Rumored Virtual Assistant Could Outshine the New iPhone

Posted in: Apple, rumors, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Buzz surrounding Apple’s Tuesday event has never been higher, as consumers eagerly await the announcement of the next generation iPhone. But the new hardware could take a back seat to a bigger announcement: a potential voice control software feature that could be released with the latest version of iOS 5.

The voice control feature — referred to by Apple pundits and bloggers as “Assistant” — could change the way people interact with their iPhones, using conversation with an artificially intelligent assistant to help make decisions and schedule daily activities.

“This is an area in which Apple has been trailing Google and is playing catch-up,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin said in an interview. “Similar to the notifications improvements [in the iOS 5 beta] and the ability to use the volume control button as a camera shutter.”

This type of service has been a long time coming for Apple. Former Apple CEO John Sculley first described such a user experience feature in his 1987 book Odyssey. He called the concept the “Knowledge Navigator,” and Apple subsequently released several video demos over the next several years illustrating how the idea would work. The Knowledge Navigator concept takes place on a tablet-computer (decades before Apple unveiled the iPad), incorporating advanced text-to-speech functionality, a powerful speech comprehension system and a multi-touch gesture interface much like that which is used in iOS.

Back in the late ’80s, Scully’s lofty visions of the future were the stuff of dreams. Today, we’re much closer to this becoming a reality. We’ve got intuitive, portable touchscreen devices that house powerful processors with enough memory to handle such impressive tasks.
To boot, we’ve got chips and software that can back up the processes required for complex speech analysis.

Apple had the hardware portions of its Knowledge Navigator concept pretty much nailed down with the latest iterations of the iPhone and iPad, but lacked the text-to-speech and speech-understanding chops. Until a start-up named Siri came along.

Siri began as a voice recognition app for the iPhone. The app sounds similar to Google’s voice search, which is integrated into Google Search on iOS and is a standalone app on Android and other platforms. With Siri, instead of just searching for a specific topic, place or person using your voice, you’re giving more descriptive instructions. One command, for example, may be “Find the nearest good Chinese food restaurant.” At launch, Siri was integrated with about 20 different web information services, so rather than just taking you to the search results page for “good Chinese food restaurants,” it would bring up Yelp results for the highest-ranking restaurants near your GPS-determined location.

But it’s much more than just a digital Zagat’s. Siri calls itself a “Virtual Personal Assistant.” Rather than just issuing the app commands or Google-style search phrases, you interact with it through conversation. Saying something like “I’d like a table for six at Flour and Water” would prompt the app to make a reservation using OpenTable. And if you haven’t provided enough information for it to complete a task, it will prompt you to elaborate. Siri then uses information about your personal preferences and interaction history so it can better accomplish specific tasks. As you use it more, it learns your preferences and improves its performance.


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Sep 29

Rumor: Facebook iPad App to Debut at Apple iPhone Event

Posted in: Apple, apps, ipad, rumor, rumors, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Without a dedicated app, iPad users have had to use Facebook’s iPhone app on the iPad. Image: Facebook

We’ve been without an official iPad Facebook app for so long it has seemed as if it would never arrive. But rumor has it we won’t be waiting for it much longer.

There’s a chance Facebook’s iPad app and an HTML 5-based mobile platform (rumored to be codenamed “Project Spartan”) are ready to hit the prime time, according to multiple reports. Both could be introduced at Apple’s iPhone event this Tuesday.

We first got a sneak peak at what looked to be Facebook’s iPad app in July. It was tucked away inside Facebook’s iPhone app and could be accessed by tweaking a setting when running it on your iPad (until the hack was removed). News of the mysterious “Project Spartan” also showed up this summer. The project was rumored to “use Apple’s own devices against them to break the stranglehold they have on mobile app distribution,” according to technology blog TechCrunch, but it could instead be used to demonstrate iOS 5’s HTML 5 capabilities at Apple’s upcoming media event.

The news about “Project Spartan” was discovered on a Facebook mobile developer’s page that has since been taken down.

If Facebook’s iPad app and Project Spartan don’t end up taking the stage at 1 Infinite Loop on Tuesday, the two products may be unveiled at Facebook HQ on a later date.

via TechCrunch and Mashable

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Sep 29

ITunes Music and Book Stores Launch Across Europe

Posted in: europe, itunes, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

The store’s still not very well stocked, but now you can pay Apple for DRM-ed books in most of Europe

Apple has pushed its iTunes music store into the last corners of Europe, launching the store in the twelve EU member countries still without it. Now iTunes users in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia will now be able to buy music from Apple, just eight and a half years after it first opened for business.

These aren’t the only rumblings in iTunes, either. The iBookstore is also moving into new territories, adding 25 new territories. These are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland, according to author Liz Castro, who compiled the list from a new drop-down for publishers that lets them choose where their books are sold.

Previously, paid-for books were only available in the U.S, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada. Everywhere else got free Project Gutenberg titles.

I checked in at the Spanish store and there are indeed a bunch of books in there, although not many. Last night there was one title for sale — Davis Allen’s Getting Things Done. The fact that stock is now increasing makes me think that some Spanish Apple engineer may have read it (rimshot).

Lack of any kind of announcement from Apple means that your best bet is to just check in on the various stores over the next few days and see if anything has changed. And if anyone in a country not listed above sees the new stores, let us know in the comments.

Apple’s iBookstore opens in 25 new countries [Pigs, Gourds and Wikis]

iTunes Music Store Goes Live In 12 More EU Countries, iBookstore Coming To More Countries Soon [Mac Stories]

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Sep 29

Flickr Catches Up to Instagram With Android App, Photo Sessions

Posted in: Android, Photos, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Embarrassingly, it has taken Flickr over a year to make an Instagram rival

Just a year after Instagram stole its lunch, ate it and then moved in with its girlfriend, Flickr has launched a rival mobile application — on Android.

Unlike the plain Jane Flickr app on iOS, which lets you upload vanilla images and view pictures already on Flickr, the Android app has ten filters which can be applied first, just like Instagram. Also like Instagram, you can see where geotagged photos were taken on a Google map, share images on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and so on and see comments.

In short, it’s the closest thing Android users will get to Instagram without Instagram itself, and it’s free.

Also announced by Flickr is Photo Sessions, and it’s pretty damn sweet. Photo Sessions lets you watch slideshows of your photos with friends around the world, in real time. Say you’re on your iPad, and your mom is on her crappy old Mac at home. You can start a session (pick the set of your latest vacation, for example) and then send her the URL. It’ll launch into the same slideshow, and whenever you swipe to the next picture, your mom’s computer does the same.

You can even zoom in and draw on the picture, and this is mimicked almost instantly on others’ machines. And if mom is signed in to her own Flickr account, you can use a chat box in the bottom corner. I’m going to try out this exact same scenario, only I plan to do it alongside a Skype session.

Both Photo Sessions and the new Android app are good examples of what Flickr should have been doing a long time ago. With its huge existing community, it could have out-Instagrammed Instagram. As it is, Instagram has grown to 10 million users in a year, with just six employees, leaving Flickr playing catchup.

Flickr App [Android Market]

In-sync browsing with Photo Session [Flickr]

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Sep 28

Intel and Samsung Breathe New Life into Neglected OS

Posted in: intel, meego, mobile, nokia, os, samsung, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

MeeGo OS, the bastard love child of Intel and Nokia, isn’t dead yet. The operating system is being re-packaged as “Tizen,” as Intel and Samsung shack up with a host of partner companies on the mobile OS front.

Tizen is based on Linux and will be an open-source operating system hosted by the Linux Foundation. Also backed by Samsung, the OS will place a heavy emphasis on HTML5 development and web apps, as opposed to a native app emphasis like iOS and Android have. Tizen will support a variety of devices such as handsets, tablets and connected TVs.

Why the switch to Tizen? Five words, one abbreviation: HTML5. Imad Sousou, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, believes HTML5-based apps are the future, and a simple upgrade to the MeeGo OS just won’t cut it. “Shifting to HTML5 doesn’t just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux,” said Sousou in a recent blog post. This would mean that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers could be more flexible, allowing them to “evolve with platform technology” and vary from market to market.

MeeGo was originally a combination of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin operating systems. Nokia dropped the platform in favor of Windows Phone earlier this year and Intel reportedly halted development of the platform in early September. Currently, there aren’t too many devices that run MeeGo with the exception of the Nokia N9 smartphone and an Asus Eee PC netbook.

It’s interesting that Tizen is an effort endorsed by Samsung, as Samsung has its own mobile operating system called Bada (its SDK was recently released to developers). But the move actually makes sense: software giant Microsoft teamed up with hardware manufacturer Nokia. Software giant Google teamed up with hardware manufacturer Motorola. Teaming up with an open-source software platform like Tizen could give Samsung — which endorses a number of platforms including Android, Windows Phone and Bada — additional control over its mobile future.

Intel is pushing Tizen for developers, endorsing the OS with its AppUp developer program and HTML 5-based developer framework. The new OS will “incorporate the same principles and open source philosophies” as MeeGo.

Tizen will also support the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) web development environment for cross-platform applications. Web-based apps can run on any phone, and as more are developed, could potentially break down “platform wars” barriers by letting more native apps run on the current major mobile platforms. Services like Appcelerator’s Titanium Studio are also bucking the native app trend by providing tools for developers to publish cross-platform web apps.

Intel plans to make the transition to Tizen over the next few months and aims to make the transition to Tizen as easy as possible for devs. Code already contributed to the MeeGo project will be ported over to and compatible with Tizen.

A release date for the Tizen OS is set for early 2012, with Tizen-running devices arriving mid-year.

Image: The MeeGo phone browser (Steve Paine/Flickr)


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Sep 28

Instagram 2 Ruins Almost Everything

Posted in: iPhone, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Every time I use the new Instagram, I feel like a cruel trick is being played on me

Ever since Instagram’s 2.0 update, I have had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. While the viewing section has been left well alone, the picture-taking and processing section has been dickered with and — frankly — ruined.

The headline features for this new release are real-time filters, allowing you to see the effects applied as you shoot, and high-res images. What isn’t mentioned is the abortion that is the new UI, or the watering down of the filters themselves.

Owen Billcliffe over at My Glass Eye has done an exhaustive comparison of the updated filters, and it’s easy to see that along with the rewrite to make them faster and full-res, the heart has been ripped out of them. The Lord Kelvin filter, now just Kelvin, is utterly different, whereas my favorite — XPro II — has become wishy washy. And many filters, including most of the new ones (of which there are four) look almost exactly the same as each other.

Worse. Some filters are gone completely, replaced by these new one. Gotham, the hight contrast, gritty B&W filter, is dead. Billcliffe also points out that the tilt-shift effect no longer allows control of the speed of the transition of the blur, or feathering. Thankfully, v2.1 will put this back in.

Those of you interested should go read Billcliffe’s post right now. It really is comprehensive, and shows you just how bad things are.

If the filters are bad, then the new UI is even worse. First, to apply the real-time filters, the live-view seems to have been downsized to a low-res feed. This is especially bad on the iPad, with its already awful camera. This view is kept as you apply filters. Only when you hit “done” do you see the proper results — up until then all diagonal lines have aliased jaggies, for example.

Application of filters is now frustrating. Instead of a neat row of icons along the bottom, the new icons overlap the bottom edge of the photo (they can be sent away, but then you can’t use them). Worse, when you touch one icon to apply the filter, the whole strips moves. So if I want to apply XPro II (as I usually do) I have to scroll around to find it instead of just hitting the second icon from the right as I used to.

This continuous scrolling means that the position of anything is never fixed. Worse is the scrolling itself, which combines two frustrations into one. First, you can’t just scroll. Dragging the strip of icons will apply whatever effect you touch, even if all you want to do is scroll. Previously you could scroll without affecting the image, which let you do quick before-and-after comparisons of filters at either end of the strip. This is contrary to almost every other iOS app.

Second, you touch a filter button and it not only jumps (bad enough) but jumps unpredictably. Touch a filter at the far edge of the screen and the strip jumps two spaces over. Touch one anywhere else and it only jumps one space. Terrible.

There is good news: You can revert to an old version by deleting the app and then reinstalling it from your computer. This assumes you didn’t sync your iPhone with your computer since installing the new version. It also means you’ll never again be able to hit “update all” on your iPhone, lest the better version is replaced again.

There’s another alternative: Try Instaplus, an app that lets you snap pictures, apply filters and send the results to Instagram. It’s great, and costs just $2.

Instagram 2.0 review: Insta-grumble [My Glass Eye]

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Sep 27

Microsoft Launches Windows Phone Marketplace Web Store

Posted in: apps, mango, Microsoft, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili, update, Windows, windows phone

Finally, the Windows Phone 7 operating system is starting to catch up.

Microsoft’s web-based Windows Phone Marketplace goes live today, years after competitors Apple and Google launched their own. The app store launch is in conjunction with the rollout of Microsoft’s latest iteration of the Windows Phone 7 operating system (Mango).

The version 7.5 update will roll out to existing Windows Phone owners slowly to ensure there are no issues for users, according to the company. Mango adds over 500 tweaks and features to the Windows Phone 7 platform.

The Windows Phone Marketplace web portal launches with over 30,000 apps in tow, an admirable enough number (though still far behind its competitors). Apps are organized into one of 16 categories, and on the main page you can also browse by featured, free, top or new. Games are a separate tab from apps, and they’re organized into one of 14 different categories. On an app or game page, you’ve got what you’ve come to expect from a web-based app market: the app icon, price, a rating, description, screenshots and reviews. After purchasing an app from the web store, the app can be automatically downloaded over-the-air, without an SMS or e-mail link, to your Windows Phone 7.5 device1.

The update to Mango is free and completely optional, but we got a chance to check it out ahead of time and honestly, there’s little reason not to upgrade. In particular, the OS adds some seriously cool social media integration to your contacts list, which is referred to as the People Hub. It also adds Wi-Fi sharing abilities and a Yelp-like built-in app called Local Scout to the homescreen.

If you’re a Samsung Focus, Dell Venue Pro or other Windows Phone 7 owner, you’ll receive an alert delivered OTA to your device when the update is prepped and ready to download. To check the status of your potential update, you can visit the “Where’s My Update” site, which is available starting today. You do, however, need PC or Mac connector software to install the update, but they’re available for free online (details are available on the Windows Phone Blog).

A number of Windows Phone Mango-specific devices will also be released later this fall.

Note 1. The original version of this story incorrectly stated that apps purchased from the Marketplace could be downloaded through e-mail or text message.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


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Sep 23

iOS Developers Reporting In-App Purchasing Outage

Posted in: Apple, apps, developers, ios, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili, twitter

A key security feature of Apple’s in-app billing feature for iOS apps has been down since Thursday night, making it difficult for app developers to verify legitimate sales and leaving some of them worried they’re losing money.

Several developers have told Wired.com the verifyReceipt function, which ensures in-app purchases are valid, is showing an error whenever customers attempt to buy something through an app. Without verifyReceipt, faked purchase attempts could be made on iOS apps.

The problem started around 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time Thursday, according to several Tweets describing the problem, and had not been resolved by the time this story was posted. Apple has not responded to our requests for comment.

The Sandbox version of the site, used for testing, is up, but the URL used for real transactions shows a 404 error. With the page down, developers cannot verify that receipts are valid, and therefore can’t honor purchases because of the possibility the receipt has been forged.

The timing is especially problematic for developers because Friday is typically a busy day, said iOS developer Martin Nilsson. He estimates the problem has cost him between $900 and $1,500 in revenue. Nilsson’s app, a magazine aggregator called Paperton, is relatively new, and he feels the issue is particularly harmful because it could damage users’ trust of the app.

The iOS in-app purchasing feature is one of the best ways for iPhone and iPad developers to make money from their apps because it provides for continued revenue long past the initial app download. The function has been a cornerstone of Apple’s success in attracting developers to make apps for the platform. Apple’s App Store now boasts over half a million apps.

The in-app purchasing issue has recently come under fire for both iOS and Android developers with the aggressive actions of patent trolls like Lodsys. This summer, Apple also revamped its in-app purchasing policy regarding subscriptions.

With the verifyReceipt page out, Nilsson says he has had to develop a workaround to allow purchases to now go through. But Andrew Johnson, who develops an offline topographical maps iOS app, said the issue isn’t as critical.

“If this continued for an extended period, this would be problematic for anyone who’s using in-app purchases,” Johnson said. He said his revenue loss has been negligible because in-app purchasing isn’t a primary component of his product.

Nilsson noted that several applications that use in-app purchasing have not been affected. The inclusion of verifyReceipt is part of Apple’s In App Purchase Programming Guide, so this could mean that developers aren’t appropriately safeguarding against the possibility of forged receipts.

If you’re an iOS developer and the issue is affecting you, shoot us an email or sound off in the comments.

Image: m thierry/Flickr


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Sep 21

Book Creator for iPad Makes E-Book Publishing Easy

Posted in: ipad, Software and Operating Systems, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

Like a miniature version of InDesign, Book Creator might be the new pasting-a-fanzine-in-mom’s-basement

The iPad is just for content consumption, right? It looks like somebody forgot to send that memo to the folks at Red Jumper. Their app — Book Creator — lets you quickly and easily make e-books on your iPad and export them ready to read in iBooks, or to submit for sale in the iBooks Store.

Watch the video of the app in action and you’ll see its a kind of InDesign Lite. You can add photos from the iPad’s library and put text in boxes. These are all resizable with automatic guidelines and snap-in positioning, and you can layer things on top of each other, sending objects forward and back as you please.

Once done, the resulting book can be opened in iBooks or sent to Dropbox, and from there you can e-mail it to friends, kids (it’s a great way to make a children’s book) or submit it to the iBooks Store, safe in the knowledge that it meets all of Apple’s technical requirements.

It’s also a pretty nice way to author a PDF if you use it in conjunction with the growing range of iPad PDF converters. Your next e-zine is going to look a lot better than the last one.

Book Creator is available now, for $7.

Book Creator for iPad [Red Jumper. Thanks, Dan!]

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