July 11, 2012
We’re happy to announce a major update to the Facebook SDK for iOS that makes it easier and faster to develop Facebook-integrated iOS apps. We’ve also introduced a new iOS Dev Center so you can quickly access the tools and resources you need to build great social apps for iOS.

There are lots of changes and goodies in here, including iOS 6 integration.

More commercial awesomeness

This time with some ZZ Top.

Then, at last, psychologists came to the music lover’s aid. They declared that he had a full-blown disability in the form of a psychological dependence on Black Sabbath.

Rock on brother!

Tapbots released a public alpha today.

Brilliant commercial

It would have been better if it was a Heineken commercial, but there’s no denying the brilliance of this one.

Ina Fried for AllThingsD:

Roaming charges may have made sense at one point, Schuster said, but added that “it is not justifiable going forward and the industry will change.”

Schuster said his company has stopped some charges for its customers who roam onto rival’s networks and also applauded European regulations that are forcing the issue.

Let’s hope things follow suit in the US. International roaming fees for Americans traveling abroad are insane.

Mat Honan:

Microsoft’s biggest consumer success over the past decade has been Xbox. It needs to replicate that success, and the only way it can be assured of doing that, at least in the short term, is to screw its hardware partners.

I couldn’t agree more. For better or worse, Microsoft needs to go for it.

Scoople surveys its users with questions in its iPhone app. The latest questions, about the app approval process, had some interesting results, including almost half that think malware will be a significant issue. I don’t think it will myself.

Anthony Kay:

As an independent writer or blogger, credibility and trust are everything. Without these, you have nothing.

I couldn’t agree more. Anthony has a fascinating story of how some blogs lost credibility for him because of recommendations they made.

July 10, 2012

Apple responds to EPEAT concerns

Apple on Tuesday responded to concerns that it asked to have its products removed from EPEAT, the U.S. government’s list of environmentally friendly products.

“Apple takes a comprehensive approach to measuring our environmental impact and all of our products meet the strictest energy efficiency standards backed by the US government, Energy Star 5.2,” Apple representative Kristin Huguet, told The Loop. “We also lead the industry by reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on our website, and Apple products are superior in other important environmental areas not measured by EPEAT, such as removal of toxic materials.”

It’s important to note that in addition to not measuring toxins and other environmental areas, EPEAT also doesn’t measure smartphones or tablets. Clearly these are two areas that are vitally important for Apple and not covered by EPEAT.

Companies like Dell have 171 products listed on EPEAT, but yet if you look on Dell’s Web site, none of their computers are even Energy Star Compliant.

By its own admission, the EPEAT certifications are old.

“Part of it is expanding EPEAT’s global reach through the multiple certification [process]; as well as moving into new, additional products; as well as updating the EPEAT [certifications], because they’re a little long in the tooth. [Each of those] is a huge project on its own,” Christine Ervin, an EPEAT board member told GreenBiz in March.

The hubbub over Apple pulling out of EPEAT is interesting because the products that were listed as gold products by the environmental organization are the same ones Apple is currently selling.

Apple has done more than any other technology company in recent memory to be environmentally friendly. What’s more, Apple publishes everything that makes up its carbon footprint on its Web site. Again, this is something EPEAT doesn’t measure. Visit carbon click to see all the carbon offsetting companies.

After months of keeping this very exciting project top secret, we are very happy to finally tell you about the new children’s voices for Proloquo2Go. As a first in the industry, AssistiveWare and Acapela Group have developed two authentic British children’s voices: Harry and Rosie.

Up until now, children with communication difficulties could only speak with an adult Text to Speech (TTS) voice or artificially emulated children’s TTS voices that sounded robotic and not genuine.

I met with the CEO of AssistiveWare in San Francisco when I was there in June and saw the app in action. It was truly amazing to see what this company is doing to help people communicate more efficiently using their app and an iPad.

They’ve posted a few videos of the children’s voices for the U.K. on their Web site. Children’s voices for the U.S. market are in the works too.

Time to be a meeting rockstar! Meshin Recall’s calendar for Evernote helps you prepare, organize and succeed!

Meshin Recall unifies all your calendars in one place. You can easily create or link Evernote entries (text, audio or photos) with specific meetings, share notes with fellow meeting attendees and use tags to categorize and search your entries.

Meshin Recall is available for both iOS and Android. Stay tuned for more exciting apps from Meshin, a PARC company.

Not the best recommendation letter I’ve read, but what can you expect.

Dropbox Blog:

As people add more stuff to Dropbox, we want to make sure they don’t have to worry about space.Today we’re happy to announce that our upgrades are getting a huge upgrade! Dropbox Pro now comes in flavors of 100 and 200 GB, but at the price of the original 50 and 100 GB plans. For those of you who need even more space, a brand new 500 GB plan is also joining the posse! If you’re already a Dropbox Pro subscriber, just take a seat and enjoy the fireworks — your Dropbox will supersize itself automatically tonight.

Welcome news for those heavy Dropbox users.

So, we’re turning to you. Would scouring ads from Penny Arcade, with everything that entails, be something you’d be willing to reach into your pocket for? The more we considered it, the more we agreed it might just be. Not only would you no longer have to look at advertising when browsing Penny Arcade, but not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of other interesting stuff.

Interesting idea. The Penny Arcade folks are proposing that people fund the site through Kickstarter for a year. In return, they’ll pull advertising and do “other interesting stuff” with the space. Time will tell if they can successfully do this, but they’re already off to a ripping start.

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM), which has lost 95 percent of its market value since 2008, is selling one of its two business jets under a plan to save $1 billion in operating costs, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Wait a minute. You’re telling me that while thousands of employees lost their jobs, market share tanked and the stock price plummeted, executives kept a corporate jet? Yep, everything is just fine at RIM.

“But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple],” shouted Ballmer. “Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.”

But that already happened on your watch.

Erica Ogg:

Just days after news hit that Apple no longer wants its computers and monitors evaluated for EPEAT certification, the first public agency has said it will no longer be allowed to buy Macs as a result.

Instead of looking at a certificate, why not visit Apple’s environmental Web site and see what the company is actually doing with its products to help the environment.

Kyle Baxter:

…naturally I’ve also been thinking through how syncing should work. This seems like an easy question to answer: iCloud. If only. I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.

As a user, I want iCloud implemented in everything I use. However, for developers, there are reasons why iCloud doesn’t make sense yet.

Craziness.

There are just too many little nuggets of Gruber-goodness in this article to pick out one or two.

Netflix business model for magazines


First off, full disclosure – I hate digital magazines. I love print magazines. Digital has huge file sizes, annoying download issues, widely varying user interfaces and price structures. Print is print, for better or worse.

Now that we’ve got my bias out of the way, I was still very impressed with the concept of digital magazines from a company called Next Issue Media.

NIM is a joint venture of five U.S.-based publishers (the service is only available in the U.S. for the time being) – Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc. They have just announced the availability of their iPad app in the US – the Android version has been available for a few months.

The CEO of NIM is Morgan Guenther, a former president of TiVo, told VentureBeat, “We’re focused on premium content,” he said, “content that’s not available for free on the web.”

To that end, at iPad launch, NIM has 39 titles to start, “with many more expected later in the year”, NIM’s Chief Technology Officer, Keith Barraclough, told me in an interview. The list of titles include popular magazines such as TIME, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Bon Appétit, Golf Digest and many more.

But even more interesting than the titles is what TIME called “a wrinkle that might be a game-changer, and is intriguing at the very least: flat-rate pricing.”

There are lots of digital magazines already available in a variety of ways, some of which are included in NIM’s stable. From standalone apps like Wired’s to “mobile reading application” Zinio to Apple’s own Newsstand. But the “all you can eat” model NIM is offering is intriguing.

NIM offers two pricing plans – “Unlimited Basic” which includes those titles that are published monthly and bi-weekly, like Car and Driver, Fortune, Vanity Fair and others. It also includes all the back issues of those same magazines – but only back to the beginning of 2012. Unlimited Basic is $9.99 per month.

“Unlimited Premium” includes all titles in the NIM catalog, including weeklies such as Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker and TIME and all their back issues to the beginning of 2012, for $14.99 per month. Plans are paid monthly via an automatic charge to a credit card and there are no annual or other prepayment plans.

NIM also offers individual magazine subscriptions from $1.99 to $9.99 per month and single magazine issues are available from $2.49 to $5.99 per issue. If you already subscribe to the paper edition of an included magazine, Barraclough told me all you have to do is enter your account information into the app and you will be credited with the digital version. Best of all, NIM is offering a 30-day free trials for all their subscription plans.

The Big Question is, will it encourage more people to go digital for their magazines?

According to AllThingsD, “Two years after the iPad launched, consumers have only shown a mild interest in tablet magazines — digital represents just 1 percent of the industry’s circulation.”

I’m certainly a prime example. I love paper magazines, subscribing to ten monthly and weekly editions and often buying individual issues of others like Esquire or Vanity Fair that have an interesting article or two. But I’ve never found digital offerings compelling enough.

I haven’t yet tried the NIM app but I was assured by Barraclough the issues of user interface have been solved through the app. While the titles will retain their unique look and feel, they have been given a consistent UI through the app, eliminating one of the confusing aspects of the differing magazines.

More good news/bad news – the Next Issue Media iPad app supports all generations of the iPad. That means it will look fine on my original iPad but those of you lucky enough to have the Retina Display of the latest iPad will have to wait until “later in the year”, according to CTO Barraclough, before the app is optimized for higher resolutions.

Another issue is the lack of issues. While 39 titles at launch is quite a few, they are primarily “mainstream” magazines. If your interests lie outside that range, you’re out of luck. For example, my favorite hobbies – motorcycling, skiing and photography – aren’t represented by a single title, even though there are dozens of magazines covering those markets. But Barraclough said this is just “version one” of the app and they are working hard to bring on many more publishers and titles – even ones not printed by the five partners in the venture.

Bottom line – is it worth it? At $120 – $180 per year, unless you’re a magazine junkie, probably not. But if you are, and the titles hold even a little interest, it would be. The ability to have all your magazines on hand and to even read magazines you don’t subscribe to just for an article or two, might be compelling. If you’re a household of two or more magazine readers, it becomes much more of a no-brainer.

If you would like, you can to listen to the entire audio interview I did with NIM’s Chief Technology Officer, Keith Barraclough.

…are doomed to repeat it.

“The past is of no great interest to me,” Mr. Boulben said on Monday, chatting over a salad at the Bauer Kitchen in Waterloo. “Give me a bit of time.”

Boulben is RIM’s new Chief Marketing Officer.

As you might or might not know, Spotify terms and conditions don’t allow developers to make money from app sales or advertising. That means I need your support to make this a reality.

Dave Caolo has begun posting a series on his 52 Tiger blog entitled “A Brief History of the iPad,” tracing the history of tablet computing from the 19th century (yeah, the 1800s) to today. Make sure to check it out.

July 9, 2012

Jerry Hildenbrand, Android Central:

The Nexus 7 doesn’t bring a compelling reason to “go Google” when considering a tablet purchase like we were hoping.

[Via iMore]

More ways the iPad can’t create cool things

Wes Ball goes through his workflow during the production of his short film, RUIN.

Incredible video, but if you go to about 1:30 he talks about using the iPad to create the trees for the project (Yes, I said create).

Joel Mathis, Macworld:

It wasn’t so long ago that Chris Grant would regularly take a whole laboratory’s worth of equipment with him into the wilderness. These days, he just takes an iPad.

This must be wrong. The iPad is only for consumption.

An interesting look at being busy from Rob Pegoraro.

“They’re going to get sued and they should get sued because I think a closer look at the record is likely to unearth knowing and willful misrepresentation,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, the former president of Apple’s products division and the founder of the software maker Be, who is now a venture capitalist and blogger in Palo Alto, Calif. “When the C.E.O. says there’s nothing wrong with the company as it is, it’s not cautious, it doesn’t make sense.”