Wednesday, February 16, 2011

MobileCrunch

MobileCrunch

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Video: iPhone-optimized Notepads

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 04:26 AM PST

Japanese stationery company King Jim is offering printed notepads [JP] specifically aimed at iPhone owners. The idea here is to make it easier to digitize, store and organize handwritten text for smartphone users, a concept King Jim calls "Shot Note". Read the rest on CrunchGear.


RIM: “Many, if not most” BlackBerrys To Have Contactless Payment Tech In 2011

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 03:04 AM PST

We’ve been waiting oh-so-long for mobile, contactless (think touch-and-go/jedi-cell-phone-wave) payments to finally take off in the states, and it seems like 2011 is finally the year. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) has budding support for it built-in right in now, and the rumor mill seems pretty dang sure that Apple’s next iPhone will incorporate it in one way or another. The latest to board the NFC train: Research In Motion.

According to RIM CEO Jim Balsillie at his Mobile World Congress keynote this morning, “many, if not most” BlackBerry handsets in 2011 will have NFC support. They haven’t clarified yet as to how they intend to handle the actual funds processing and all those important bits — but if we don’t hear about that today, we’ll probably hear more in the coming weeks.

Anti-Sleep Pilot for iPhone Aims To Keep You From Snoozing Your Way Into A Car Crash

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 02:32 AM PST

The human brain is a funny thing. Get yourself in a shady situation, and it’ll pump you up with adrenaline in an effort to turn you temporarily superhuman. Touch something dangerously hot, and it’ll holler at the nervous system to move your hand before you’re even aware of your mistake. Put it behind a steering wheel on a long road at 2 A.M with the heater humming, though, and it starts to think that a 60 mph nap is a fantastic idea — then you wrap your car around a tree. Thanks a lot, brain.

The new Anti-sleep Pilot app for iPhone is built to help out when your brain falls short. Alas, the steep price tag will probably keep it from helping much of anything.

The first time you boot up the Anti-Sleep Pilot, you punch in a handful of details about yourself to build your “customized risk profile”. They throw these details into a big ol’ formula (taking into account stuff like the time of day, the type of roads you’re driving on, the speed, etc.), and from that try to work out just how alert you probably are, and how important it is that you pull over. So far, so good — right?

Unfortunately, this thing costs $20 bucks. I’m very, very rarely one to complain about an app’s price — if anything, app devs have boned themselves by teaching folks that mobile apps should be dirt cheap. With that said, we live in a time in which the vast majority of folks on the road are completely convinced they’re the world’s finest driver. It’ll be tough enough to convince people that they need something like this to supplement their mortal shortcomings — at $20 bucks, it seems nigh impossible.

Intel Handsets To Hit This Year, Says CEO Otellini

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 02:21 AM PST

This year at MWC is really dominated by ARM-based devices, but that level of ascendancy can only be maintained for so long. Intel is a juggernaut in the PC world; could it successfully punch its way into mobile? CEO Paul Otellini sure thinks so, and just a short while ago confirmed that after years of rumors, we’d be seeing Intel-based handsets in 2011.

He wouldn’t be more specific, so we’re left to wonder, but a little investigation over the next few months might reveal who might be leaving ARM behind. Of course, Nvidia wants a piece of the pie, too, so anyone who looks like they might be jumping ship could also be going in that direction. But perhaps Intel is looking to break in with its traditional PC partners like HP and Acer.

ARM’s CEO just yesterday disparaged Intel’s attempts to go mobile, saying Intel is “still a long way apart in processors on the market. Unless they can make their processors smaller they will struggle.” Who knows what Intel has going on in their skunk works? We’ll keep our ears open for further developments.

Seeking To Defuse Tensions, Samsung Opens Dialogue With XDA-Dev Forum

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 12:01 PM PST

Samsung Mobile has started a sort of outreach initiative for the members of the influential XDA Developers forum. The forum has been a hotbed of activity of late vis-à-vis Samsung, particularly since we’re nearly one year passed the release of Android 2.2 (Froyo) and it’s still not available on the Verizon Wireless variant of the Galaxy S, the Fascinate.

The outreach program (I suppose you’d call this an outreach program) looks to heal some of the wounds that have developed between the forum’s members and Samsung Mobile. SamsungJohn is the point-man, and this is how it starts:

OK, this is the beginning stages. Right now as we speak, I’m working side by side with our research and development teams and other departments on what I can provide to you guys. As I said before, I am here for you guys, I know you will give most influential feedback to help better our products. So, with that being said I want to setup up a voting poll in a new thread. This poll will be looked at by just about everyone who plays a vital role in devices. In the meantime, what I need from you guys first is the BEST technical questions. Please don’t ask questions about any future release dates of hardware and software questions. Those questions are already at the top of the list for the starting of the poll. I will give you guys by the end of today to respond.

As mentioned a minute ago, one of the bigger sticking points between the community and Samsung Mobile surrounds the release of Froyo for the Fascinate. Someone—somehow—leaked an image of Froyo for the Fascinate a few weeks ago, and the community there has worked out most of the kinks (nearest I can tell). They’ve already worked out a de-bloated version of the build. So if you’re handy with Android, you could be rocking a clean build of Froyo right now.

Questions being asked by the forum members include things like "why is the GPS radio so rubbish?" and "why did it take you guys to so long to talk to us?"

That’s probably the biggest lesson to learn here, that in 2011 it absolutely behooves companies to have boots on the ground. You need people on message board, you need people on Twitter talking to your customers. Look at Crytek. A few days after its most important game was leaked more than one month before its release date, you had the CEO of the company reassuring people that, while the leak was lame, it’s still committed to the PC platform, thus allaying fears that it would use the leak as an "excuse" to abandon said platform.

Hopefully something positive comes out of dialogue.

Gingerbread OTA Update To Hit Nexus Ones Within The Next Few Days?

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 07:25 AM PST

I know, I know — you’ve heard this tale before. According to the rumor mill, the Nexus One has pretty much been set to get Gingerbread “within the next few days” since a week after Gingerbread was announced 3 months ago.

But we’re here in Barcelona, and we’re just surrounded by Googlers. One of’em casually mentioned Gingerbread’s impending arrival on the Nexus One, only to clam up when we asked for clarification. So we dug elsewhere, and sure enough: according to a handful of independent sources, the Android Team is currently aiming to roll out Gingerbread on the Nexus One via Over The Air Update either late this week or early next.

Excelsior!
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