Wuh-oh! Considering its popularity and the number of handsets floating around out there compared to the number of security exploits discovered thus far, I’d say Apple has done a pretty good job of keeping things locked down.
As this just-discovered flaw proves, however, nobody’s perfect.
Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >>
Loopt continues to ramp up its focus on location-based deals. The pioneer of the mobile social network is launching a new app called LooptCard, which lets mobile consumers tap into offers, coupons and discounts by checking-in to spots. Today, Loopt is partnering with deals site Mobile Spinach to offer users deals and coupons for local merchants via the Loopt App.
The deals are part advertising part coupon and will only be featured in San Francisco for now. Coupon site Mobile Spinach will offer dozens of deals exclusively to Loopt users and through their own site per week. For example, Blowfish Sushi, a Sushi restaurant in San Francisco, offers any signature roll for free which typically costs $10-$15 per roll. Loopt users show their phone message at the restaurant to receive these discounts. Loopt says it will be rolling out the offers in LA and New York in the coming months.
The deals feature will be integrated into Loopt’s app in the same way that local content and reviews about restaurants, bars and events from Zagat, Citysearch and the Loopt community are featured in the app. Loopt’s COO Brian Knapp tells me that location-based deals are central to the future strategy of Loopt. And the coupons serve as an advertisement and an incentive to frequent an establishment. Loopt is monetizing these coupons in some way, but Knapp declined to give the specifics of what the revenue breakdown is.
Of course, most of Loopt competitors are making similar ventures in the mobile coupon and deals space. Foursquare has special deals for “Mayors” of establishments and Yelp offers location-based specials and offers in its mobile apps. Even Google is getting into the mobile coupon game.
With 3 million users, Loopt is continuing to innovate its platform to compete in a competitive space, where Facebook may be entering as well. Location-based deals are one part of the picture; with check-ins, advertising and even merchant reviews and listings all included as features.
Information provided by CrunchBase
“We don’t know how to build a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk.”
“Netbooks aren’t better at anything.”
Those two quotes are both from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The first was during an earnings call in late 2008 when Jobs fielded a question about why Apple wasn’t cutting prices amid the rising success of netbooks. The second came on Wednesday as Jobs was unveiling the iPad.
Apple has made it clear all along that they had no plans to build a netbook. And true to their word, they haven’t. But that doesn’t mean that Apple didn’t feel there was a need for a device that resided in between a full laptop and a mobile phone — in fact, that’s squarely where Apple is positioning the iPad. With it, they feel that they’ve created a $500 (for the baseline version) device that is superior to every netbook out there.
Meanwhile, Google has decided to target the market in between the laptop and the mobile phone as well. But whereas Apple is anti-netbook, Google is very pro-netbook — they just want to make them better. That’s the reason behind Google’s Chrome OS, as Google clearly laid out during its unveiling event late last year.
And so yes, we once again have Google and Apple on a collision course.
Now, it remains to be seen if people who buy an iPad will do so instead of buying a netbook. At first, I’m not so sure that will be the case. But it stands to reason that eventually, this will happen. And as Jobs’ comments on stage on Wednesday made abundantly clear, that’s Apple’s idea too. In their eyes, you shouldn’t buy a cheap, underpowered PC, you should buy an iPad, their anti-netbook.
Google, which plans to release its first Chrome OS-based netbooks in time for the holiday season next year, can’t like that plan too much. They have promised that netbooks that run Chrome OS will be better than current netbooks because they’re dictating certain minimum requirements (such as big keyboards) to manufacturing partners. But Chrome OS netbooks won’t be able to match the sex appeal of the iPad’s multi-touch screen. However, what they can offer is a familiar experience (much more like a traditional laptop then an iPad), and that will be appealing to a lot of people.
And what’s interesting is that for either of the two to be massive hits, they both will need consumers to continue to feel comfortable moving away from traditional software applications such as Microsoft Office. But their plans to get consumers to do that are very different. Google wants everyone to move towards doing everything on their apps in the cloud. Apple, as they made clear with their overly-long iWork for iPad demo on Wednesday, wants everyone to move towards using iPhone OS-based apps.
And that’s why this battle coming at the end of this year will be interesting to watch. Both Apple and Google are very popular with consumers, but their offerings are very different — while aiming for the same market. And as two companies that were once as close as could be, it’s also fascinating to watch the tension and awkwardness as they now compete in an ever-growing number of areas.
If this market between laptops and smartphones proves big enough, perhaps the two frenemies can once again find a common ground and band together to defeat their common enemy: Microsoft. But the obvious strategy for this used to be that Google would attack Microsoft from the bottom with its Chrome OS netbooks, while Apple attacked from the top with their premium computers, leaving Microsoft squeezed in the middle. With the iPad now clearly aimed at netbooks thanks to its pricing and Apple’s positioning, everything is different.
Information provided by CrunchBase
Editor’s note: This is a guest post penned by Ethan Nicholas, developer of the million-dollar iPhone game iShoot and the newly released Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting. Before the iPad was even announced, Nicholas was already conceiving his next game with the tablet device in mind.
The Internet is a funny place. After Apple announced its new iPad, I cringed at the hate being directed its way on sites such as Slashdot and Digg. Even the guys at Penny Arcade, whom I normally agree with, said “that iPad presentation had to be the worst thing I’ve even seen on on the Apple stage” and that Apple had failed to make a case for the device.
If you believe them, the iPad is going to be a massive flop.
Well, the unwashed masses on the Internet also predicted that the iPod would be a failure. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.
The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers. People who don’t like the idea of upgrading their 3D drivers, or adjusting their screen resolution, or installing new memory. Who don’t understand why their computer gets slower and slower the longer they own it, who have 25 icons in their system tray and have to wait ten minutes for their system to boot up every day.
For what most of these people need a computer for, the iPad is perfect. It doesn’t do as many things as a “real” computer does, but the things it does do it does in a way even non-tech-savvy people can figure out, and there are far fewer ways to screw it up. So if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you:
My mom.
My mother is a lovely lady in her sixties who is… well, “not computer savvy” is probably a good way to put it. I regularly have to figure out why her computer is running incredibly slowly, or why it won’t print, or any of the million other random things that happen when people who don’t live and breathe computers sit down at one daily.
The iPad is perfect for her. It does exactly what she needs. It will let her watch movies and listen to music and read books on long flights. It will make using a computer fun instead of an annoying chore.
But it also won’t allow her to install umpteen news and weather gadgets that start up on boot and slow her computer to a crawl. It won’t suddenly forget how to talk to a network, or get so confused by all of the software installs and uninstalls that you finally have to break down and reinstall the system from scratch. In other words, my mother’s next computer is going to be an iPad, and I dream of the day when I can finally throw off the oppressive chains of being the one guy in the family who knows how to actually keep a computer working.
And you know what? There are millions upon millions of people just like her out there. They outnumber us. And they finally have a chance to become productive, self-sufficient computer users instead of constantly asking family members to fix their computers or, even worse, keeping the Geek Squad in business.
No, the iPad isn’t for everyone. But I’m going to go on record as saying that, for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing.
(Image courtesy of Flickr/Scott Chang)
Information provided by CrunchBase
While those initial leaked specs for a Chrome OS-based netbook unabashedly specified a multitouch panel, Google is remaining shy on confirming just what it’s up to in the fingerprint department. When Google’s Senior Product Manager of Search was asked pointedly about touch support in the OS, according to TechRadar he looked nervously at a PR manager before failing to provide a concrete answer. Read that how you will, but the open source wing of the OS, Chromium, has gone ahead and created its own vision of what touching chrome might look like, including a very compelling video we’ve included for you after the break. This includes popup context menus, a selection of finger- and thumb-friendly keyboards, and of course some delicious multitouch support. Interestingly, if the scale of the hands in the video below is anything to go by, the Chromium group expects an eventual Chrome OS tablet to be between three and five feet wide, which might be a little cumbersome for those with diminutive laps.
Google mum on Chrome OS touch support, Chromium devs show us how it might look anyway (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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