Friday, March 11, 2011

MobileCrunch

MobileCrunch

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Microsoft Confirms That The Windows Phone 7 Copy & Paste Update Will Be Late

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 02:15 PM PST

Technically, we could have said that yesterday’s word that Window’s Phone 7′s Copy/Paste update had been delayed was already confirmed, given that it came straight out of Microsoft France’s mouth.

With that said, we’re hearing it put Microsoft into a bit of a scramble. When you’ve got a big ol’ global operation, sometimes it’s a bit tough to make sure everyone’s on the same page — and in this case, they weren’t. It took’em a day or so, but Microsoft US has synced up with the ol’ mothership and is now confirming that the WP7 update will indeed ship in the second half of march, rather than the “first two weeks” as they’d previously announced.

The word this time comes straight from the official Windows Team blog. After saying that “it's important that we learn all we can from the February update” (read: the one that mysteriously bricked a small percentage of WP7 phones), they say that their “plan is to start delivering the copy-and-paste update in the latter half of March.”

On a happier note, they also add that these delays shouldn’t delay any future updates, including the one they announced back at Mobile World Congress (the one with Internet Explorer 9, HTML 5 support, etc.) Of course, given that they haven’t really announced any dates regarding other updates, we wouldn’t really know if they did.

Behind The Scenes In Symbian’s Development Hell

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 02:06 PM PST

Many in the mobile industry have wondered for years what exactly Nokia was doing over there. With the iPhone and Android taking huge bites out of them and reinventing UI on a yearly release schedule, Nokia seemed to have tied itself to the anchor of legacy systems, while still ostensibly researching and designing a true next-generation OS. It can’t have been both, right? As it turns out, it kind of was.

The Register has an interesting behind-the-scenes look, partially based on info from a longtime Symbian developer, Mark Wilcox. He explains how the enormous bureaucracy of Nokia produced pet projects and internal fragmentation, paralyzing the development process while producing an illusion of progress to many middle managers. It’s an interesting read so I won’t over-summarize here.

In the meantime, lets hope Nokia uses its billion-dollar “research grant” a little more wisely.

Apple Tweaks In-App Purchase To Prevent Accidental Purchases [Update]

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 11:39 AM PST

Bad news for any shady iOS developers out there: if you were sneakin’ In-App Purchase opportunities into the first 15 minutes of your game in hopes that lil’ ones might accidentally buy it, your evil-genius plan has been foiled.

For those who haven’t been keepin’ up on the ruckus: soon after Apple introduced In-App Purchase for iOS, someone figured out that users could make In-App Purchases without entering their iTunes password if said In-App Purchase was made within 15 minutes of purchasing the app. That’s a marvelous idea, in theory — no one likes entering their password multiple times.

The problem? Parents would buy games, hand’em over to their kid, and come back to find that pint-size had unknowingly bought up all sorts of virtual goodies (friggin’ Smurfberries!) with real world cash. With the release of iOS 4.3, this should no longer happen.

As of yesterday’s software update, Apple will require your password be entered a second time before In-App Purchases can be made. Once that’s done, In-App Purchases can be made sans-password for up to 15 minutes. As long as you keep Junior’s prying eyes away from your password and don’t go out of your way to enable In-App Purchases, there shouldn’t be any more surprise charges for $99 boxes of virtual food for your kid’s virtual cat.

Or you could, you know, tell your kid to not buy these things. If they’re too young to understand that, they probably shouldn’t be using $500+ slabs of glass completely unsupervised anyway.

(Update: We’ve updated this post for clarification. We originally implied that a password was required for EVERY In-App Purchase, which isn’t the case. You’ll be asked for your password a second time to enable In-App Purchases, at which point you’ll be able to buy In-App content for 15 minutes without reentering your password. You can also disable In-App Purchases all together under Settings >> General >> Restrictions)

[Via Washington Post]

[Original Image courtesy of AtomicJeep on Flickr]

House burning down? Do A Google Search.

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 10:18 AM PST

There’s nothing quite like being in an emergency situation and not knowing exactly which number to call. I know — I’ve been there recently, and it was terrifying and mind-opening. In a world filled with smartphones capable of holding 80 billion numbers and where any restaurant’s phone number is a Googling away, gone are the days where every house has emergency numbers on the fridge and a copy of the Yellow Pages in the pantry.

Google’s realized this (probably from the spike in searches for “OH GOD MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE”), and has taken steps to shave a few precious seconds off the emergency-number-getting process. When you search for emergency terms (like “poison control”, or “police department”) on Google from your mobile, it’ll now spit out a Click-To-Call phone number as the first result. If your handset’s browser has GPS functionality, it’ll even localize the number automatically (that’s great for if you’re traveling and don’t know the local equivalent to 911.)

Just don’t Click-to-call accidentally. As it turns out, the poison control ladies don’t like when you call just to say “Hi!”

DOMO Lets You Share Your Interests And Connect With New People Around You

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 09:23 AM PST

Tokyo-based Tonchidot, legendary TechCrunch50 finalist and maker of the popular Sekai Camera augmented reality service, has released a new (free) app for iPhone and Android. But DOMO (Japanese for "nice to meet you" or "thank you") isn't an update or variation of Sekai Camera but another (ingenious) way to "augment" reality. DOMO is being offered as a "pre-social" app, which makes use of your interest graph and location to make it easier to connect with people who are similar to you and physically near you ("pre-social", because these people are initially strangers). Read the rest on TechCrunch.


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