Apps

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Google Plus (iTunes) iOS users will see a big update in their App Store today with lots of new features and improvements that were detailed earlier this week. Most notable is the ability to start and join video hangouts from a mobile device. In brief testing on both an iPhone 4 and an Android device on Wi-Fi, the Video conferencing worked great. It should work over 3 or 4G but the results obviously won’t be as good. Also, this version changes Huddles to Messenger and you can now send picture files through the messenger application.

Full list of improvements below:

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As noted by The Next Web, Twitter has announced two developer conferences coming up on October 12th, in New York and London, to discuss Twitter’s integration into iOS 5. Twitter’s Jason Costa describes the event:

There’s a lot going on in the ecosystem and we’d like to take this chance to share the highlights with you – including the latest developments with the platform, areas of opportunity that we’re seeing, and a heavy focus on the iOS 5 Twitter integration for developers. We’ll also be holding a Q&A session with members of the platform team, plus time to hang out with each other.

If rumors are true, these events will be shortly after the announcement of the iPhone 5 or/and iPhone 4S, and most likely after the release of iOS 5. There’s only 150 spots for developers, so grab your spot fast!
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If all of the rumors are true, Amazon has a 7-inch “media tablet” that runs a forked version of Android and will connect to all of Amazon’s services, including its Appstore, Movies, TV, Music and of course eBooks. It won’t be true multi-touch but the rumored price is half of the iPad’s (just like the screen) at $250.  Who is making this for Amazon?  Foxconn of course.

Yes, it sounds just like a Nook (which is getting an interesting update soon) with a better backend store.

via Verge
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Reuters is reporting that the Financial Time’s web app is more popular than their recently Apple-removed iOS app. You’ll recall that the Financial Times’ iOS app was removed by Apple, due to the publication trying to dodge Apple’s 30% cut regulation. Luckily for Financial Times, they’re not seeing any issues in traffic, getting more than 700,000 users on their newly launched web app. Financial Times is simply drawing in users by displaying a message at the top of their site, linking to their HTML 5 app.

So this draws the question — do publishers really need to have an iOS app on the Store? Maybe not.

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You’d be forgiven for thinking that Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile is just a fad which ranks down below on the App Store earnings chart. I mean, how popular a pro-grade paint and drawing software costing two bucks a pop can become in this freemium economy? You will probably be surprised to learn it amassed a cool seven million paid downloads on the App Store thus far. This would mean revenues in the range of fourteen million dollars for the company, or about $9.8 million after Apple’s customary thirty percent cut. Bloomberg has the story:

Autodesk Inc. spent almost 30 years selling engineering and design software to accumulate 12 million customers. It took a single iPhone app – and less than two years – to attract 7 million more. Autodesk’s SketchBook application, which also works with the iPad and Android devices, has boosted the company’s user base and drawn new kinds of customers, Chief Executive Officer Carl Bass said today.

The San Rafael, California company benefited in ways more than just direct revenue from paid downloads…

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Adobe today quietly released Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10, bringing with them new Facebook and YouTube integration, video editing and burring features, object-based search, and new color correcting and text curving and flowing effects.

New Facebook features allow you to auto analyze your images to identify people and tag them based on your Facebook friends. Those tags are then carried over to Facebook when uploading from Elements. A new object-based search is one of the most impressive enhancements, allowing you to find images containing a particular object such as a house or vehicle.

Other features include auto enhance and color correct for video footage, allowing you to “Automatically boost tone and vibrance without affecting skin tones, or use sliders to adjust color with complete control”. You can now also paint 1 of 100 new paint effects onto specific photo areas, add new text effects, and immediately upload video clips to Facebook and Youtube. Learn more about all the new features in these latest releases here.

Adobe’s store now has Photoshop Elements 10 or Premiere Elements 10 for $99 each (upgrade $79/ea) or both for $179.

Or, you can grab Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 for $99 each on Amazon now.  Curiously, Adobe hasn’t yet updated Photoshop Elements 9 Editor in the Mac App Store.  It will be interesting to see what happens there.

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Instagram has released a huge update today with Version 2.0 in what they’re calling one of the “largest revamps” to the app’s core camera technology since it launched. Along with a UI overhaul, the app now supports images with a resolution up to 1936×1936 on the iPhone 4 (in your camera roll, not on Instagram), in comparison to the 612×612 prior to the update.

As part of a brand new camera UI, the most impressive feature is the new “live filters”. They’ve taken the old filters and rewritten them to be “200x faster”, allowing you to instantly apply effects in real-time within the camera UI. The image above shows off the new UI, but you can go here to learn exactly how all the new elements work. Oh, and you can also now enable and disable borders on every filter.

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Among a bunch of Google+ improvements announced today, Google said it would bring Hangouts to mobile phones including iPhone (and iPad 2 and 4G iPod likely).  We’re big fans of Google Hangouts and having it on mobile is going to be really great.  They are also offering Hangout broadcasts which might be fun ways to broadcast a keynote for instance :D

Google announced a bunch of other big Google Plus stuff including open invitations today.  Check full coverage on 9to5Google.com
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Apple today released a long-awaited update to Final Cut Pro X, its video editing software which fell on def ears with pro video editors. CNET reports that the new version takes into account a number of issues professional users took with the application:

Among the biggest new feature to be added as part of a software update that will go out to users this morning is support for XML. This adds the option to both import and export projects in the XML format, meaning users can take XML formatted projects from Final Cut Pro 7 and other non linear editing software and work on them in Final Cut Pro X.

XML support gives users who previously couldn’t import old projects a workaround solution, requiring them to first export Final Cut Pro 7 projects in XML and then import them into the new Final Cut Pro X. Another big news: Apple says that multicam editing and broadcast-quality video monitoring – the two features absolutely indispensable in professional work – are coming “in early 2012”.

Another glaring omission has been fixed because Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1 now takes advantage of your graphics card to speed up export. Apple also released a new software development kit to camera manufacturers. Using the SDK, vendors can write Final Cut Pro X plug-ins so latest cameras can work with the software provided there’s a FCPX plug-in from its vendor. Previously, users would have to wait until a new Final Cut Pro version is released with support for the latest hardware.

Last, but not the least, there is now a new free version to try before you buy the $300 application. The trial version works for 30-days from the time it’s first launched. Interestingly, Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.1 was not yet available on the Mac App Store at press time. The updater is available from the Final Cut Pro X Software Update page. Compresson 4 and Motion 5 have also been updated to support new features in Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1. In addition, Apple released the ProApps QuickTime Codecs update which adds eight new codecs to apps that use the QuickTime platform. Release notes: Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1, Motion 5.0.1 and Compressor 4.0.1. More on other enhancements and tidbits after the break.

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After bringing its Unreal Engine 3 to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, Epic Games yesterday announced (via MacStories) the free Unreal Development Kit beta for OS X which finally lets developers write games for the Mac based on the latest and greatest version of the Unreal Engine. Epic Games explained in a blog post:

Unreal Engine 3 supports developing for Apple’s Macintosh platform for easy cross-platform distribution. The development process is virtually identical for games to be run on the Mac platform, but the packaging and deployment process does require some additional steps.

Hopefully, this development will pave the way to Gears of War and Unreal Tournament for the Mac, which we were promised four years ago.

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Last week, code strings were found in iChat’s framework in Lion indicating Apple could be at work developing a cross-platform support for the iMessage protocol in iChat. Today, Fusible points to a set of three trademarks (1, 2 and 3) which surfaced in the United States Trademark & Patent Office’s database. All three are related to iMessage. As you know, iMessage is Apple’s new messaging protocol allowing iOS 5 devices to exchange instant messages and rich media between themselves (think BlackBerry Messenger for the iPhone). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it makes a lot of sense to eventually integrate FaceTime, iMessage and iChat into a unified messaging solution on both the Mac and iOS 5 devices. Switching between iChat and FaceTime for Mac is unwieldy and there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to send iMessages from iOS devices to our Mac peers and vice versa.

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Apple usually does a commendable job patching the Mac’s security flaws in a rapid order as they arise. Numerous holes have been plugged, bugs squashed and exploits fixed as they are discovered over the years. And just when you thought Lion couldn’t be drastically compromised, arrives a new exploit based on Apple’s old Achille’s heel: The permissions system in OS X.

CNET warns that any local user on a Lion machine can quite easily change passwords of any other local account, without admin privileges – how spooky is that?  Not very good for shared machines certainly. Kudos for discovering this nasty design omission go to the security blog Defence in Depth, which explains that Lion’s Directory Services no longer requires authentication when requesting a password change for the current user:

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Google has announced on the Chrome Blog a new release on the Chrome stable channel. The new release has been available to developers in the dev channel since August, where developers got the chance to use the full-screen mode (Ctrl+Shift+F) and overlay scrollbars inside of Lion. Today, these features have landed for everyone; download it here.

Also landing in the new version are two new technologies for developers: Web Audio API and Native Client. Web Audio API adds the ability for developers to use different audio effects, but even better, Native Client brings the ability to execute C and C++ code in the browser. Check it out in the video after the break:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeRUkNRyycA]

Looks like Bentley isn’t the only one unveiling some new Apple-related features at this year’s International Motor Show in Frankfurt. Auto-part and equipment supplier Valeo was showing off a variation of their Automatic Park4U system, this time remotely parking a Volkswagen using an iPhone.

Equipped with only the ability to brake and accelerate, CNET explains a “Valeo representative stood outside the car, a Volkswagen Sharan, and parked it merely by using an iPhone app.” We dug up the video above posted by Valeo that shows the iPhone app in action towards the end.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuP37PW0Yn8&feature=player_embedded]

Google’s Translate service is relatively accurate and smooth to use, but taking the time to type in what you’d like translated or even clicking the microphone button each time is a pain — especially in real-world situations. A new app that was announced at TechCrunch Disrupt, Vocre, lets you instantly translate foreign languages through voice, even when the conversation is going on. Vocre uses Nuance technology to translate speech in a three-step process.

Being in a foreign country, this app could be great for when in a coversation. As seen in the video above, it’s quick and allows the conversation to flow freely without taking the time to type words you don’t know how to spell in a search box.

The only downfall we can see to this app is the likelihood of needing an expensive data plan when travelling overseas. But for those times you do have data: useful!

Vocre is free in the iTunes App Store. Updated: As pointed out by our lovely commenters, the app comes with 10 free translations, and after users will be charged $.99 for an additional 10 and $8.99 for an additional 100.

Download

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UPDATE [Friday, September 16, 2011 at 7:50am ET]: RIM just reported quarterly earnings. They shipped 200,000 PlayBooks, barely half the figure analysts projected. That means that sales ratio to iPad is 1:46, not 1:19. Shares slumped 20 percent on the news, Financial Times reports.

We’ve suspected Research In Motion’s seven-inch BlackBerry PlayBook tablet may have been met with muted response from the iPad-maddened fans of technology. Bloomberg polled a group of analysts and concluded that RIM during last quarter may have shipped just one PlayBook for every nineteen iPads. Apple during the June quarter shipped 9.25 million iPad. iPad sales surged following the somewhat subdued shipments of 4.69 million units in the March quarter, when the company had begun winding down production of the original iPad ahead of the iPad 2 launch.

As for the PlayBook, RIM is set to report quarterly earnings tomorrow so Bloomberg’s comparison is a bit unfair because it draws conclusions from analysts’ estimates, who we know often miss the mark. There’s also that crucial difference between shipping and actually selling something to end users. Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley forecasts 1.5 million PlayBooks in this calendar year versus 39.2 million iPads and seven million Samsung tablets.

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Well, what do you know, the Federal Trade Commission is putting acne-curing apps out of business with the announcement that developers will stop promoting them under FTC settlements. Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the FTC, summed it up nicely:

When it comes to curing acne, there’s no app for that.

Computerworld explains that the FTC’s action was the first-ever against overblown health claims by mobile apps not supported by scientific evidence. Apps which claim to treat acne were found on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace. The ruling puts programs such as AcneApp for iPhone and Acne Pwner for Android out of business as App Store and Android Marketplace comprise the biggest chunk of mobile app downloads. Said programs, the agency explained, “both claimed to be able to treat acne with colored lights emitted from smartphones or mobile devices”. The apps would have you hold the display next to the area of skin to be treated for few minutes daily. The ruling won’t affect apps that educate on acne treatment, such as this one.

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Cable television channel TNT, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner, has released an iPad app which gives you complete access to full-length television shows and movies aired by the network. As you’ve come to expect from similar apps, TNT for iPad lets you access behind-the-scenes videos, check out program guides and schedule reminders. It also integrates with GetGlue, Facebook and Twitter so you can pollute your friends’ social stream with the seemingly unimportant “I’m watching…” status updates.

Important caveat: Watching full episodes of television shows such as The Closer, Falling Skies and Rizzoli & Isles requires authenticating through your television provider. The TNT for iPad app is a free download from the App Store. Go past the fold for three additional screenshots of the TNT for iPad app.

NBC has also updated its iPad app with the same content found on the NBC.com web site. Yes, you can finally stream The Office to your iPad! Also, their TBS for iPad program does the same for Turner’s other shows, including episodes of Conan, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, available free on your tablet.

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The ailing computer maker, Hewlett-Packard, announced a brand new iOS app with remote management and printing capabilities. In addition to the usual assortment of features ranging from automatic printer discovery and setup, printer status notification, remote ink/printer status and troubleshooting cartridge identification, HP Printer Control turns your printer into a two-way communications device with scan to Facebook, scan to Google Docs and scan to email capabilities.

The app works with most ePrint-enabled Photosmart, Officejet and LaserJet printers released in 2011 and is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch running iOS 4.2 or later. The app wasn’t on the App Store at the time of this writing. HP also supports Apple’s AirPrint technology on select printers and has recently rolled out AirPrint compatibility to eight new LaserJets.

By the way, don’t try opening the official PDF document in Safari or Preview – it appears garbled. Chrome renders it properly, though. Kinda makes you wonder what was HP thinking here, even with the bigger worries on their mind. Official release notes after the break.

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Adobe is finally bringing decent Flash video support to iOS, only it will have to do an on the fly transcoding to do so. The latest release of Flash Media Server, version 4.5, implements new features that will allow same source video delivery thanks to “on demand repackaging” to both Flash and iOS via HTTP Dynamic or Live Streaming.

“Now publishers can simplify their video publishing and protection workflows with Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 with protected HLS support, audio channel extraction, DVR/PVR live, on demand and variant playlists. One set of content without any preparation or additional storage and deliver safely to both Adobe Flash with HDS and to Apple devices using HLS.”

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Bluetooth headset maker extraordinaire Jawbone revealed earlier this year that they plan to bring a health aware electronic bracelet called Jawbone Up to the market later this year. Details on the interesting product have been very scarce, with just a handful of tidbits and press shots emerging since the product’s announcement in July. Now, we’ve secured the product’s full promotional video (right below) and all of the details… including a launch date.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ijVSLb7b8]

We’ve posted all of the internal documents after the break, but here’s the summary:

• The Jawbone Up uses sophisticated hardware and software to track user’s steps, distance traveled, pace, intensity level of movement, and calories burned throughout a day. In addition, the system intelligently breaks down a person’s active time versus inactive time. Perhaps the coolest feature within the device’s “Move” functionality is the ability to remind users when it’s time to get up and be active. This little bracelet can actually vibrate as an alert for the user to become active. Of course, a user reads all of the above information categories from their iPhone or Android device with a special Jawbone-built application.
• Another focal point of the Jawbone Up’s iPhone integration is a very neat feature in their “Eat” category. The bracelet – along with the app – can learn what food is best for a user’s metabolism – and can create a custom diet setup for each user. As you can see in the promotional video above, a user can just snap a photo of each and every meal in order to get the “Eat” system rolling. In all, this “Eat” function promises to track your meals, measure eating responses, and improve your personal metabolism: all with the help of a comparatively (to gadgets) good looking bracelet and an iPhone app.
• The third cornerstone of the Jawbone Up has to do with sleep. These sleep features are perhaps the Up’s most instrumental capabilities. The Up basically tracks everything about a user’s sleeping habits: hours slept, time to fall asleep, sleep phases/patterns, waking moments, and overall sleep quality. Within this sleep category, the most important and intutive feature is the “Silent Wakeup Alarm” mechanism. In order to allow a user to wakeup refreshed, the bracelet will send gradual vibrates to the user. Based on your natural sleep cycle, the feature will fully wake you up.

Jawbone said the Up would launch later this year, and the company is currently shooting for a September 25th launch of their intuitive and feature packed health-bracelet. We’ve also got the official sizing chart for the product (which may work with BlackBerry also) thanks to reader C.

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