Skyfire for iPhone Approved, iOS Devices Get Adobe Flash Love

We got a look at Skyfire for iPhone last week and the promise of getting Adobe Flash videos onto our Apple devices was exciting. As expected, though still surprisingly, the app has been approved for the iOS devices by Apple. The Skyfire web browser will go for $2.99 in the app store and will be available some time Thursday morning. We got to play with a preview of the app, and came away impressed.

How did the company manage to get around Apple’s loathing of Flash? CNN reports:

To get around Apple’s restriction, Skyfire came up with an innovative solution: When users click on a page that contains Flash video, Skyfire’s servers download, render and translate the video into HTML5, which is a Web standard that iOS devices support. Skyfire then displays a thumbnail that users can click on to stream the video from its servers.

Here’s what we said earlier last week about how this works:

Skyfire plays nice with Flash videos and websites (most of them, at least) because it uses a server-assisted browsing experience. Basically, the browser uses big, powerful servers to process all the Flash content on a website and then pushes that data to your phone. This means your phone doesn’t have to be super powerful and also reduces the amount of data that you’re pulling down on your smartphone data plan.

So, technically, your iPhone or iPad won’t be playing straight Flash as videos are converted so that they can be played on your iOS device, but at least this limits your restrictions when viewing the web.

But all is not perfect in Skyfire land. Determining which videos and content are in Flash and encoding it all is a huge task, and some sites have just blocked the browser completely. Hulu, which is huge for Flash lovers wanting videos on their phones, banned Skyfire from encoding its content. Additionally, Flash-based video games and non-video content will not be supported, so it’s not without some major limitations.

At any rate, it’s nice to know that when you browse the web with Skyfire, you’re less likely to see that little blue sorry-no-Flash-here icon.

source : intomobile

Only 36.2 percent of Android devices run Froyo

Google will soon release Android 3.0, but 2.2 still hasn't reached a majority of users. Is the company fragmenting its OS?

Google is beginning to run into an updating issue. While the search company continues to release new updates to its Android operating system at a staggering pace (one every few months), its users are not adopting the software upgrades as quickly. As of Nov. 1, 92.1 percent of users have migrated away from Android 1.5, but far fewer are running 2.2 Froyo, Google’s current OS release, which was rolled out to devices in July and August.

Here are the stats (and pet names):

• Android 1.5 (Cupcake) – 7.9 percent
• Android 1.6 (Donut) – 15 percent
• Android 2.1 (Eclair) – 40.8 percent
• Android 2.2 (Froyo) – 36.2 percent

These numbers come directly from Google’s Android Developer resource blog and were gathered by testing the number of devices accessing the Android Market in a given period of time. The company also notes that .1 percent of devices are running obsolete versions older than 1.5. While this obsolete number is low, the take on Android 2.2 is sluggish for an operating system that is automatically updated from the web. 77 percent of users are running 2.1 or higher. This becomes a challenge when developers wish to use the enhanced API tools of newer Android releases. If a developer codes to Android 2.2, only 36.2 percent of Android users will be able to use it. With Android 3.0 Gingerbread already around the corner, this upgrade lag may get worse.

Would it be wise for Google to start naming its operating systems after more delicious treats? Perhaps the general public just isn’t interested in eclair and froyos. Hopefully gingerbread will prove more intriguing.

(Edit: Readers have pointed out that many carriers, like AT&T, and manufacturers have held back Google updates to add in their own code to each release. Poor updating by Google’s partners could be a major reason for the lag in adoption.)

source : digitaltrends

5 Awesome Vehicles for the Extremely Wealthy

article image In movies, video games and comic books, the rich supervillain always has a giant floating, flying or rolling lair armed with lasers, equipped with an insane amount of protection and cluttered with gadgets and escape pods. Ridiculous, right? After all, who would actually build expensive vehicles just to sell to the supervillain demographic? Well, ask whoever built ... #5. The 550-Foot Laser Yacht Russians are well-known for producing huge things, mainly drinks, bombs and Ivan Drago. But one Russian in particular is known for his huge-ass boats. His name is Roman Abramovich, and he owns "Eclipse," the largest private yacht in the world, which, oh by the way, is something a James Bond villain would consider "too over-the-top." It's the building in the middle. It's almost as long as two football fields (557 feet) and has a German-built missile defense system. It also has radar and armored windows and -- this our favorite part -- camera-destroying lasers. The lasers are a new innovation in the field of high-end craziness. According to The Times, the system works by automatically detecting the electronic light sensor inside any nearby camera and firing a high-intensity beam of light at it, destroying its ability to take pictures. This image exists only because he hasn't built any lasers into his own body ... yet. OK, but what if somehow (possibly through decades of ninja training), camera-toting, missile-holding paparazzi pirates managed to get inside the yacht? Well, in that case, Abramoavich can simply walk into the goddamned built-in mini-submarine he keeps just for these occasions. It'll drop 160 feet into the water, protecting him and his 29-year-old wife from any harm. Whatever you're thinking, he's like "I know!" Exactly what kind of disaster could you not survive in this thing? Alien invasion? Meteor? Nuclear war? This guy would be sitting on the deck of his floating palace, watching it and munching caviar. Forget about a zombie apocalypse -- he wouldn't even notice it until somebody told him. True, it's probably not much use in a world where none of that really happens, but you can't have it all. Plus, the whole thing only cost him $1.2 billion (with a B). Whoever said "money can't buy happiness" is a fucking liar. #4. Luxury Tanks Lots of companies pimp out SUVs and turn them into armored cars ... but if your needs are less "stay protected" and more "destroy the Autobots" (and you're willing to spend over $150,000 on a vehicle), there are other options available for you. For example, the custom-built Armor Horse Vault XXL is literally an armored limousine. While the inside does look like a limo (complete with leather seats, LCD screens and a bar) ... This is only the lobby. ... its exterior is closer to a tank: The Armor Horse is capable of comfortably seating 25 people ... and if they ever get bored, they can simply pull out the emergency gun ports and start shooting pedestrians. This is a real thing, by the way. The Armor Horse isn't just defensive (it's covered in bulletproof panels); it's also an offensive weapon that can be used to wreak havoc and destruction across its path. It comes with two escape hatches that double as skylights, in case you want to mount a death ray on top of it or something. So it can stop bullets, but we know what you're thinking: What if my enemies are equipped with rocket launchers? A sensible question, and one we ask ourselves every morning. Fortunately, there are other vehicles on the market to cater to our needs: Even the name of that beast inspires fear: The Dartz Kombat T98 SUV has steel-plated doors and three-inch-thick windows, making it essentially indestructible. At $200,000, it's very practical for all those millionaires who like spending time in war zones. This is what happens when a tank and a Hummer make love under the moonlight. #3. The Speedboat Batman Wishes He Had Sure, if you want to host parties while you're conquering the world, the floating luxury yacht back at #5 is probably your best bet. But maybe you want the yacht equivalent of a sports car instead -- something that can go speeding off into the horizon when a secret agent comes after you on his Jet Ski. That's where the MY Ady Gil comes in. This is, in scientific terms, the awesomest fucking speedboat ever made. Seriously, look at it: That is not a model. It exists. Wikipedia tells us that it is fully submersible; it can travel up to 57 mph using two 540-horsepower engines, plus it has a large enough fuel tank to cover three-and-a-half thousand miles in a single go. And it can do all that with eight guys sleeping on the bunk beds inside. Fortunately, the craft hasn't fallen into the hands of the Lex Luthors of the world. Its last owners were part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, also known as the Whale Wars people -- the guys who go around fighting Japanese whalers. Yes, this was used by actual, real-life vigilantes. And yes, they built speakers into the boat, which they used to blast music at the whalers. We're talking in past tense because, unfortunately, the boat sank in January 2010 after being rammed by a Japanese whaling boat. You can take solace in the fact that it died a hero's death. Or at least it died while annoying whalers while filming a reality show. source : cracked

What Your Phone Says About You [Graphic]

Sometimes the guys in our office like to get in stupid fights about phones. Yeah I know they do it on the blog, but they also do it in private as well times 1000. It is essentially the song that never ends, with Mike Arrington and Jason Kincaid erring on the side of Android and MG well, sigh.

Here’s Arrington’s take on one such fight that happened today:

“Earlier this evening in the office Jason Kincaid and I, both Android users, asked MG yet again why he won’t admit the iPhone flaws. He said ‘As soon as there’s a better phone, I’ll buy that one instead.’ I pointed out that the iPhone doesn’t actually make calls with any reliability, and he said, seriously ‘It doesn’t need to. I use the phone mostly for apps and browsing, not calls.’

My response – if it actually made calls, perhaps that wouldn’t be true. He then threw something at me and stormed out of the office. True story.”

While I’m sure it exists, I’ve never seen a girl get in a pissing match over a phone. But apparently our phone choices have become a huge part of our identity no matter what our gender, hence the above comic.

And while I would not throw down for my iPhone 4, I have to say that the comic is pretty accurate, especially the dinosaur part.

source: PC magazine

Can Microsoft Get Its Mojo Back?

On Nov. 8, the first phones running Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 will hit the U.S. The update to the venerable mobile operating system formerly known as Windows Mobile is bulging with fresh ideas — a clever alternative to Apple's iPhone and handsets that run Google's Android, not a clone. Even so, with other contenders so well established and Windows Phone 7 missing key features such as cutting and pasting and full multitasking, Microsoft remains a decided underdog in the smart-phone wars.

Hold on — Microsoft an underdog? The company whose software has defined the PC industry for as long as there's been a PC industry? The one whose record results for its first quarter, announced last week, included $3.3 billion in profits for Windows and another $3.4 billion for business applications like Office? (See pictures of Bill Gates' early years.)

Yes, indeed. With Windows and Office maintaining their awe-inspiring market shares, Microsoft has the past of computing all sewn up. It's the future — boom markets like Web services and mobile operating systems — where its position is shaky. The arrival of Windows Phone 7 is one of several encouraging developments, but the company is still grappling with the odd conundrum of turning 35 years of wild success into an asset rather than an albatross.

It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, Microsoft used the dominance of Windows and Office to bulldoze its way into new territories, gleefully trammeling over any company that dared get in its way. In the mid-1990s, for instance, Netscape's free Web browser became the hottest software around; Microsoft responded by bundling its own Internet Explorer with Windows as a freebie and encouraging sites to add features that worked only in Internet Explorer. The strategy, replicated in multiple variations elsewhere, was known as embrace and extend. (Inside Microsoft, reportedly, it was sometimes called embrace, extend and extinguish — that last step being what it let the company do to rivals.) (See the top 10 Microsoft moments.)

But a funny thing happened in this century: embracing and extending turned out to be a deeply flawed business strategy, and not just because its use against Netscape led to the epic court case known as United States v. Microsoft.

There were hints it was getting rusty as early as a decade ago, when Bill Gates declared that he believed tablet computers would outsell traditional laptops within half a decade. It was a visionary prediction, as if Gates could see the iPad era coming years before the iPad existed. However, Microsoft's Windows-centric recipe for tablets — modify the operating system slightly for pen input, then cram a PC into a slate-style case — was profoundly unsatisfying. Consumers noticed and stayed away in droves.

Looking at every new opportunity through Windows-colored glasses also hurt Microsoft on the Web. In 2006, it reacted to Google's Microsoftian dominance of Web search by relaunching its MSN Search as Windows Live Search, a move that was more confusing than clarifying. It also announced plans to strip Hotmail of its name — one of the best-known monikers on the Internet — and redub it Windows Live Mail. (The company wisely reconsidered that one.)

In retrospect, Microsoft's single worst month may have been January 2007. On Jan. 9, Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, instantly turning then popular Windows Mobile phones into antiques. Then, on Jan. 29 of the same year, Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista, the successor to Windows XP. It was a bloated disaster, short on compelling new features and long on glitches. Throngs of consumers and businesses, largely satisfied with XP, showed the company who was boss by refusing to budge. (See photos of the long, extraordinary career of Steve Jobs.)

The dawn of the iPhone, the ascent of Google, the failure of Vista: those were but a few of the wake-up calls that Microsoft got that its old ways weren't working in this new age. It took a while for it to answer them — sleeping giants have a way of pressing the snooze button repeatedly — but in 2009 and 2010, the company snapped back to attention. It's been replacing embrace and extend with something closer to regroup and reconsider, and the results have been surprisingly encouraging. (Comment on this story.)

Windows Phone 7 is so promising because it has little in common with Windows 7 beyond its name: rather than shoehorn the traditional Windows interface into a phone, Microsoft built something new. Windows 7, released a year ago in the wake of the Vista mess, is a hit because almost all its major changes involve eliminating long-standing annoyances that Vista ignored or exacerbated. Bing, the company's search engine under yet another new name, is Google's only true competitor in part because it's quite different, with a greater emphasis on shopping and research.

At times, Microsoft still acts like a lumbering, ham-fisted behemoth, like back in April when it released a couple of misbegotten phones called Kin — not based on Windows Phone 7 — and then axed them after two months. Only a company cursed by near infinite resources would even consider building two parallel future mobile operating systems at once. Still, there are plenty of signs that it understands the enormity of the challenge ahead. Its new corporate tagline, "Be What's Next," may address consumers, but it serves equally well as a mission statement for a company that's still in the process of figuring out how to be what's next.

McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist. His column for TIME.com, also called Technologizer, appears every Tuesday.

source : time

Facebook "Unlike" Button Comes to the News Feed

Facebook quietly introduced an "Unlike Page" button into its News Feed recently, which allows users to opt-out of receiving unwanted messages from pages they had previously said they "liked."

Now, when a user clicks the "X" button to remove a story from their News Feed, there's an option to unlike the page, which joins other options including "mark as spam, "hide this post," or "hide all" posts from the offending page.

The change, notes marketing news site Clickz, reporting on the impact of this news for businesses, makes "Facebook wall posts behave a little bit more like email, while raising the stakes on high-level message relevancy so audience members don't opt out."

Unliking Gets Easier

We saw the news about this change reported on Monday as well, on unofficial Facebook news site, Inside Facebook. They noted that this was only one of many changes surrounding the "like" feature as of late. Facebook has also been prompting users with few likes to add more pages, has been showing what likes users have in common, has re-launched its "Page Browser" to encourage liking and more.

The "unlike button" change is so new, in fact, that we couldn't find any mention of it in Facebook's own help documentation. Currently, the only mention of how "unliking" pages works is this FAQ post directing users to "unlike" a page by visiting the page directly, then clicking the "unlike" link in the lower left-hand corner. That process is similar to how you would "un-friend" someone on Facebook - you have to visit their profile and then select "Remove from Friends" at the bottom left. Obviously, having to navigate directly to a page to unlike it is much more cumbersome for users than just clicking a button.

Spammy Marketers, Take Note

For marketers, this easy-access "unlike" button in the News Feed means it's even more important to dial down the frequency of updates so as not to become overly "spammy." The content of those messages should be carefully considered too. Offend a user with an off-the-cuff post and they may be gone for good. Says Clickz, users can now "simply see one brand post that turns them off and leave the company's audience...without leaving their personal wall." The only good news for marketers here is that the change doesn't seem to propagate over to the end user's Wall for their friends to see, too.

While the new "unliking" methodology is certainly easier than before, it's not a one-step process. Instead, "unliking" actually takes two steps - the first to click "unlike page" and then a pop-up box appears asking if you really want to remove your connection to the page entirely. A user has to click "Remove Post and Unlike" in order to opt out from seeing any more messages from that page going forward.

The change may help to increase the number of "likes" a user doles out in the future. Once users know that it's (almost) as easy to "unlike" something as it is to "like" it, they may be more willing to click the like button.

Apple iOS 4.2 Goes Gold, Released to Developers

If you have an iPad and you've been patiently waiting for an iOS update so you can have multitasking on your iPad, or if you're an app developer curious when you'll see some of the changes promised in Steve Jobs' speech in September like AirPlay streaming audio, your wait may be nearly over. Yesterday Apple seeded the "gold master" of iOS 4.2 to developers, including versions of the operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch as well as the iPad.

The fact that the mobile OS has "gone gold" means that Apple has finished development work on it and developers now have access to a version that won't change between now and release. This also means that iOS 4.2 is close to a public release, as this is Apple's way of telling developers to test their apps for 4.2, or rebuild their apps to take advantage of the new features.
Unfortunately, while the developer seed implies that an official iOS 4.2 release is imminent, there's no way to tell exactly when that will be. Jobs did imply that iPads would see an update "this fall," and most people predicted an October or November release, so we may see an update later this month.

Among the new features coming in iOS 4.2 is AirPlay, Apple's new wireless audio streaming utility that allows you to stream music, photos, and video from any iOS device to an AirPlay-compatible device, including the Apple TV. A number of manufacturers like Denon and Sony have already committed to making several of their receivers AirPlay compatible, which means you'll be able to pair your iPhone or iPad with the receiver in your home theater and play music, stream photos, or even play video wirelessly to the devices in your entertainment system.

iOS 4.2 also comes with AirPrint, Apple's solution to the problem of printing on iOS devices. Currently you can't print from the iPad or iPhone. iPad owners will get full multi-tasking in iOS 4.2, along with support for locking the iPad in portrait or landscape mode with software instead of the switch on the side. iPad users will also get access to Game Center in iOS4.2. iPhone/iPod Touch owners will get music controls accessible by bringing up the multitasking control bar and swiping past the running apps. The same bar on the iPad allows users to control brightness and volume as well as music playback.

source : appscout

The future of notebooks: Ars reviews the 11" MacBook Air

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is no stranger to superlatives. Every product Apple makes is "insanely great," "amazing," or even "magical." So when he unveiled the latest MacBook Air models, declaring them to be the "future of notebooks," it was easy to dismiss his claims as nothing more than the usual Apple marketing. After spending some quality time with an 11" MacBook Air, however, it's hard not to hope he's right. The new MacBook Air is a great package, but there is one glaring weakness in it that will keep many potential buyers away: the CPU.

When the new machine's hardware specs were announced, we had concerns about its performance given Apple's decision to stick with older Core 2 Duo processors—let's face it, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo is laughably behind the performance curve of current mobile processors from Intel. Given the tiny space inside the 11" MacBook Air's case, Apple chose slower ultra-low voltage processors, and, as you'll see in our benchmarks, this decision has a real impact. Though we can appreciate the design tradeoffs, that doesn't mean we're necessarily ready to accept subpar performance. We also wanted to know if Apple's battery life claims would prove accurate under use outside of a laboratory.

We already answered a number of your specific questions about the 11" MacBook Air last week. Read on to find out more of what we learned after putting it through its paces in real-world settings.

Design

The 11" MacBook Air fits perfectly on a small side table.

If there's any doubt that the MacBook Air is the new hotness, merely pull one out in public. In a coffee shop, a local hipster watering hole, on a train—no matter where I was while working on this review, everyone asked about it. Most were curious about the speed—there has been some handwringing about Apple's decision to use "slow" ULV Core 2 Duo processors. Everyone was impressed with the size, weight, and its positively solid feel.

"It's like an iPad with a hinge and a keyboard," a colleague exclaimed when looking at the machine for the first time. That description isn't too far from the truth—the 11.6" aluminum unibody frame is about the same width and approximately 2" longer than the iPad. At its thickest point, the MacBook Air is 0.68" inches, while the iPad is 0.5" at its thickest point. And at 2.3 pounds, the MacBook Air is less than a pound heavier than the iPad—if you add an Apple Wireless Keyboard to your iPad then the MacBook Air actually has a weight advantage.

The 11" MacBook Air is just a little over 2" longer than an iPad.

It's also just slightly thicker, as well.

Compared to the previous 13" MacBook Air, which was 0.76" thick at the widest point and weighed in at 3 pounds, the 11" MacBook Air (like its new 13" brother) is both thinner and significantly lighter. Its footprint isn't a whole lot smaller—11.8" x 7.6" versus 12.8" x 8.9"—partially due to the 11" model having a 16:9 display compared to the 13" model's slightly squarer 16:10 proportions. However, the difference is noticeable when carrying it under your arm—or putting it into a 13" case. Screen real estate, despite the smaller size, is roughly the same, with the 11.6" 1366 x 768 pixel screen offering 25,000 more pixels than the 13.3" 1280 x 800 pixel display of the older generation Air. (The new 13" MacBook Airs are now equipped with a 1440 x 900 pixel display.)

source : arstechnica

Facebook fan numbers accurately predict election results

It's news that should be kind of obvious but still somehow feels surprising: according to Facebook's "political team," candidates who had more fans on the social networking site than their opponents won their actual elections overall. (So not only did they lose, but they also are super unpopular and probably won't even be asked to the spring formal.) Here are the numbers:

The Facebook political team's initial snapshot of 98 House races shows that 74% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests. In the Senate, our initial snapshot of 19 races shows that 81% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won their contests.

As I said, this really shouldn't be shocking — candidates who have more people who like them get more people to vote for them?! — but I think we often consider becoming a fan of someone on Facebook to be something of an empty, half-hearted political gesture. Not to mention that it's notoriously difficult to get younger people to vote and Facebook has a whole lot of them.

But now that Facebook has become so prominent, and so much more than the easiest way to stalk a cute guy from your Biology class, I guess it's time to reconsider.

source : nerve news

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