Apple announced iOS 5 today with 200 new features for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Grab a coffee and settle into your favorite reading chair as we’re going to take a closer look at some of these changes. More »
Gallery: iOS 5 Twitter integration
Apple brings deep Twitter integration to iOS originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The words “Facebook” and “Twitter” are now verboten on French TV, because France thought it’d be a good idea to follow its own laws. Last week, the country’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) ruled that TV networks and radio stations will no longer be able to explicitly mention Facebook or Twitter during on-air broadcasts, except when discussing a story in which either company is directly involved. The move comes in response to a 1992 governmental decree that prohibits media organizations from promoting brands during newscasts, for fear of diluting competition. Instead of inviting viewers to follow their programs or stories on Twitter, then, broadcast journalists will have to couch their promotions in slightly more generic terms — e.g. “Follow us on your social network of choice.” CSA spokeswoman Christine Kelly explains:
“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition? This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box – other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?'”
It didn’t take long for the US media to jump all over the story, with many outlets citing no less objective a source than Matthew Fraser — a Canadian expat blogger who claims, in ostensible sincerity, that the ruling is symptomatic of a “deeply rooted animosity in the French psyche toward Anglo-Saxon cultural domination.” Calling the ruling “ludicrous,” Fraser went on to flamboyantly point out the obvious, stating that such regulatory nonsense would never be tolerated by corporations in the US. But then again, neither would smelly cheese or universal healthcare. Apple, meet orange. Fueling competition via aggressive regulation may strike some free-marketeers as economically depraved, but it certainly won’t kill social media-based commerce. Facebook and Twitter have already become more or less synonymous with “social networks” anyway, so it’s hard to envision such a minor linguistic tweak having any major effect on online engagement. That’s not to say that the new regulation will suddenly create a level playing field — it won’t. But it probably won’t put America’s social media titans at a serious disadvantage, as some would have you believe. Rather, these knee-jerk arguments from Fraser and others seem more rooted in capitalist symbolism and cross-cultural hyperbole than anything else — reality, included.
France bans Twitter, Facebook mentions on TV, in the name of market competition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Real or fake, this screenshot certainly looks like it could be iOS 5
It wouldn’t be a proper Apple Keynote day without some last-minute rumors. This time we have an is-it-or-isn’t-it iOS 5 screenshot, as unearthed by MG Siegler. In it we see the hoped-for new notifications system, as well as a few more interesting tweaks.
Siegler’s sources tell him that this picture is the “right idea.” Fake or not, it certainly looks the part. At the top we see Twitter notifications built into the status bar. This is consistent with both the recent rumors of deep Twitter integration in iOS 5, along with Apple’s hiring of the Palm WebOS notifications designer Rich Dellinger a year ago.
What we also see is a a tweaked Camera app icon, and what is possibly an answer to Windows Phone 7 phone’s live tiles. The Weather app icon appears to be showing a live temperature. Either that or Apple has just swapped the icon to read 23º C instead of 73º F. Or it’s just a fake. [UPDATE: according to UK-based Gadget Lab reader 747Captain, changing the region of your iOS 4 device to a country that uses celsius also changes the Weather app icon to read “23º.” So we’re left with just the notification bar and the new Camera app icon.]
Either way, we’ll know the answer in six hours or so. It could be that a revamped home screen is going to be rather small news. I have a feeling that iOS 5 could be a bigger upgrade that the recent jump from iPad 1 to iPad 2.
Is This iOS 5? Dunno, But It’s Likely The Right Idea [TechCrunch]
See Also:
Defamation settlement requires Malaysian man to apologize 100 times on Twitter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Remember Firesheep? Well, the cookie snatching Firefox extension now has a more portable cousin called FaceNiff. This Android app listens in on WiFi networks (even ones encrypted with WEP, WPA, or WPA2) and lets you hop on to the accounts of anyone sharing the wireless connection with you. Right now it works with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Nasza-Klasa (a Polish Facebook clone), but developer Bartosz Ponurkiewicz promises more are coming. You’ll need to be rooted to run FaceNiff — luckily, we had such a device laying around and gave the tap-to-hack app a try. Within 30 seconds it identified the Facebook account we had open on our laptop and had us posting updates from the phone. At least with Firesheep you had to sit down and open up a laptop, now you can hijack Twitter profiles as you stroll by Starbucks and it’ll just look like you’re sending a text message (but you wouldn’t do that… would you?). One more image and a video are after the break.
Continue reading FaceNiff makes Facebook hacking a portable, one-tap affair (video)
FaceNiff makes Facebook hacking a portable, one-tap affair (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 02:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well, it’s not exactly a good day for anyone that placed their bets on a Twitter-linked photo service. As expected, Twitter today announced its own integrated photo-sharing service, which will launch “over the next several weeks” and let folks upload an image and attach it directly to their tweet from Twitter.com — the same functionality is also said to be coming to its official mobile apps “soon.” The service isn’t completely in-house, though — Twitter has partnered with Photobucket to actually host the photos. In more immediate news, Twitter has also announced that a “completely new version” of Twitter search is rolling out today. It promises to deliver more relevant results for searches and trending topics, as well as related photos and videos that will be displayed next to your results (which can also be browsed and explored in-depth). Head on past the break for a quick demo video.
Continue reading Twitter announces integrated photo-sharing service, improved search
Twitter announces integrated photo-sharing service, improved search originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Twitter has been a great success as a communication tool and social network, so much so, that services have been built up around it by 3rd party developers to fill the gaps. One of those gaps is image sharing, which has allowed services like Twitpic and yfrog to gain a foothold and user base. But […]
It’s all about doing new stuff, right? This week, we’re doing a lot of new stuff: paying for soda pop with our cell phones, reading books on E Ink displays, and waiting for Duke Nukem Forever. OK, well maybe none of those things are actually new, but we’re doing them in new ways this week, kind of. Listen to the podcast, is all we’re saying.
Host: Tim Stevens
Guests: Brian Heater
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: 10yr – Regulate
02:30 – Kobo unbuttons for $129 eReader Touch Edition, we go hands-on (video)
03:52 – Barnes & Noble announces new touch-enabled Nook for $139 (video)
13:43 – Barnes & Noble selling Nooks for $99 on eBay
18:03 – Live from Microsoft’s Windows Phone VIP preview event!
22:00 – Windows Phone ‘Mango’ search offers location-specific results, app integration (video)
29:36 – Windows Phone Mango and Bing Vision hands-on
32:05 – Live from the Google Wallet press event!
33:50 – Google Wallet mobile payment service, Google Offers announced
35:16 – Google Wallet vending on Nexus S hands-on
43:21 – Droid Incredible 2 review
48:53 – Spotify and Facebook partner up, send Europe a friend request?
50:55 – Sony makes good, doles out identity protection activation codes for PSN and Qriocity users
51:28 – TweetDeck and Twitter, together at last
54:00 – Duke Nukem Forever goes gold, will meet promised June deadline (really!)
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Filed under: Podcasts
Engadget Podcast 241 – 05.27.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 15:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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That picture of your baby/dog/child on the couch is almost as cute as the one of her on a chair! Which is almost as cute as the one of her sleeping! Which is almost as cute as… OK STOP. More »
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