Despite a strong weekend opening, the Sorkin/Boyle movie Steve Jobs appears to have bombed in its nationwide rollout, grossing just $7.3M against earlier estimates of $19M. That gives it a total take so far of around $10M, which Variety says leaves it unlikely to turn a profit.
The picture cost $30 million to make and at least as much to market. That means that “Steve Jobs” needs to do at least $120 million in order to break even. Given that the film is dialogue-driven and lacks a major star, its foreign prospects seem bleak.
The piece notes that the earlier success of Sorkin’s The Social Network may have created false hopes … Expand Expanding Close
The TweetDeck Mac app today received an update with a handful of new features including the ability to share account access with others, direct messages to groups, support for in-line GIFs and videos, and much more. Expand Expanding Close
Twitter today shared a few details about its plans for the social network in 2015 including some new features around video, improvements to communicating with Direct Messages on the service, and changes to the timeline to help keep up with relevant content. Expand Expanding Close
Twitter has finally updated its Mac app with support for a few photo features the social network introduced over the past year.
Twitter for Mac users can now view and share tweets with up to four photos included, something introduced to iPhone Twitter users in May. The update also includes the ability to see and send photos in privately shared direct messages; iPhone Twitter users received this feature last December.
Twitter has been making a lot of improvements to its messaging experience in its mobile apps in recent months. It first introduced Direct Message syncing and other improvements back in July, and in recent weeks started rolling out the ability to receive direct messages from any follower (even those you don’t specifically follow) for a select number of users after testing it internally. Today, a new report claims that Twitter is planning further improvements to Direct Messaging and could as far as launching a standalone messaging app, much like Facebook Messenger.
The company plans to significantly update its direct-messaging product in the near future, according to multiple sources, bringing the long-buried feature to the forefront for the first time in years.
But Twitter’s new vision for direct messages will go further. It has kicked around the idea of launching a standalone direct-messaging application separate from the Twitter app, according to three people familiar with the matter. It is unclear, however, what form the final revamp of direct messages will take.
The report doesn’t provide much more info on Twitter’s plans, but does say it recently met with employees from MessageMe, one of the increasingly popular messaging apps that Twitter’s revamped DM service would attempt to combat. It also adds that we could see the new Direct Messaging app by the end of the year alongside a previously reported design overhaul.
After Unity announced in March that it was beginning to work with Facebook to help bring web games using the engine to the social network, Facebook announced today that it’s releasing a new SDK to bring 3D Unity games from Android, iOS, and the web to Facebook. The cross-platform SDK will also allow developers to easier integrate Facebook sharing and game invite features directly into their unity games across mobile devices and the web.
Facebook has a relevant and engaged audience of gamers that mobile developers can reach by publishing their games on Facebook, and the SDK makes bringing a mobile game to web as simple as writing one line of code. By filling out a few fields in the developer app and giving us the URL of your game object, you can bring your mobile game to a whole new audience of avid gamers on Facebook.
The SDK will also let Unity developers implement native dialogs for inviting friends, requests, and sharing through Facebook, and the company will be “helping more people find and play Unity games on Facebook by driving discovery of the Unity player with a custom install flow for the Unity plug-in.”
UPDATE: Some users are reporting that their accounts have been restored following the deletion earlier this evening. We’re still waiting on an official response from Instagram.
UPDATE 2: Instagram has responded with the following comment.
A small percentage of users could not access their accounts for a few
hours as a result of a temporary glitch. We have restored access for these
users, and no pictures or data were lost.
It seems many Instagram were caught off-guard today when the free photo-sharing app suddenly deleted a significant number of accounts, citing “terms of service violations” as the reason despite many affected users having no such content on their profiles.
Your Vine stream will probably start to include a lot more faces, for better or worse, as the Twitter-owned video-sharing app received an update today to include support for the iPhone’s FaceTime camera as well at mentions:
Today we’re introducing an update to Vine that we think you’ll love. Over the last few months, we’ve asked for your feedback on a lot of things, from reporting bugs to suggesting new features. We’ve been listening. Here are a few new additions to Vine:
You can now shoot with the front-facing camera. When creating a post, tap the button in the bottom left corner to try the front-facing camera. You can switch back and forth between the regular and front-facing camera as many times as you want.
Vine now supports mentions, so you can tag people in your post. Users who are mentioned will receive a notification in Activity. To mention a user, type @username and select the name among the suggestions you’ll see. See the screenshot below for an example — when I type @chris, I see suggestions for Chris Fry, Chris Hardwick and Christofer Drew. When I select Chris Hardwick, his Vine profile will automatically link in my post’s caption.
Today we’re announcing a few improvements to Twitter for Mac:
Photos: It’s easier than ever to share photos. Simply click the camera icon in the lower-left corner of the Tweet compose box, and choose a photo to share. If you prefer, you can still drag and drop photos from the desktop.
Retina display support: Now Twitter is even more vibrant and detailed on the highest resolution Mac notebooks. With this update, Tweets will be clearer and sharper, creating a more vivid experience.
14 more languages: In addition to English, Twitter for Mac now supports Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish.
Along with these updates, Twitter for Mac offers keyboard shortcuts, support for multiple accounts and timelines, and other features that you’ve come to love.
You can get this update now in the Mac App Store. Keep an eye out for more improvements to come, too.
P.S. I'm taking a break from iOS to work on Twitter for Mac full time.
Twitter #music takes a step toward filling the void created when everyone migrated from MySpace, which was one of the most effective music discovery tools for me until it was largely vacated.
Twitter promises to “change the way people find music, based on Twitter,” per the social network’s blog, which I believe will be widely appreciated.
Facebook updated its iOS app today to version 5.1 with a number of new features including the ability to send real “Facebook Gifts” (for U.S. users)—a feature previously only available through the desktop app. There are also a few new messaging and sharing features included:
• Swipe left anywhere in the app to quickly see who’s available and send a message
• Add friends you message most to the top of your Favorites
• Share multiple photos fast
• Give real gifts to your friends using Facebook Gifts (US-only)
• When sending messages, see who’s active so you and your friends know how soon to expect a reply
As noted by Twitter user @shahruz_, Apple does not seem to want to show any other Podcast apps besides its own when you search for “Podcasts”. Twelve hours after it was first reported, iTunes still appears to only show Apple’s Podcast app.
We are fairly certain that Apple is not doing this on purpose, but it does not seem to be jumping to fix the error either.
Twitter is keeping busy this summer with a slew of updates to its line of products, and now the microblogging service is tidying up TweetDeck.
The desktop application updated today with a new layout for “swifter navigation,” featuring refreshed columns, expanded actions for tweets, and even a revamped Twitter bird icon.
Today you can more easily discover and react to the information you care about with new navigation features in TweetDeck. You have given us some really useful feedback after using these features on web.tweetdeck.com, and now you can use this swifter TweetDeck on other platforms too.
This swifter version of TweetDeck is available now at tweetdeck.com, where you can download TweetDeck for Windows, access the Chrome app or sign in to web.tweetdeck.com. The updated TweetDeck for Mac will be available in the Mac App Store shortly.
Go to the TweetDeck Posterous page for a full breakdown on the latest version, or just check out the video above.
Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter behind the Sony-backed biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, just sat down with Walt Mossberg at the D10 Conference to discuss everything from the late CEO and upcoming blockbuster to writing techniques and…The Beatles.
Sorkin is a Hollywood mogul thanks to his numerous successes, including “The Social Network,” “Moneyball,” and “The West Wing,” but the Big Shot warned that his silver-screen version of the best-selling biography is still in its early stages. Expand Expanding Close
While agreeing that Apple has to do more social network-type features, CEO Tim Cook noted at the D10 conference in California tonight that the company will consider killing the Ping social network feature baked into iTunes due to a lack of interest among users. He did mention that social has to be a focus despite Apple not necessarily having to own a social network, and he noted upcoming Twitter, Game Center, and iMessage integration in Mountain Lion bring new social elements:
What happened to Ping?
Cook: Apple doesn’t have to own a social network, but does Apple have to be social? Yes…You’ll see us integrate Twitter into the Mac OS as we introduce Mountain Lion. Game Center and iMessage could be thought of as social… We tried Ping and I think the customer voted and said this isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into… Will we kill it? I don’t know. We’ll look at that.
Google launched its Schemer social networking mobile app today as a free iPhone app in the App Store. It originally launched as an invite-only service in December, and then it released on Google Play in April. The service is a social network “all about the schemes” that allows you to post your plans for future activities, meet with friends, and get activities, or “schemes” recommended to you.
A long-awaited iPad version of popular professional networking service and social network LinkedIn has finally arrived alongside an updated iPhone app and new interfaces for the service. As you would expect, the app provides much of the same features of the previous iPhone version with access to “Updates,” “Profile,” and “Inbox” through a completely redesigned interface. The new iPad version also does a good job of pulling calendar data from the device’s calendar app and merging it with data/events from the network.
The app appears to be designed entirely in HTML, which might mean LinkedIn has plans to bring the same experience to other platforms. You can grab the updated LinkedIn iOS app for iPhone or iPad now.
One of the biggest problems that we, as technology writers, face is choosing exactly what to write about on the site. What specifically is worth covering, and what should we leave for other pubs/Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus, etc.? We often pass on the smaller stories or the ones that do not directly relate to our core mission, even though we find them valuable or interesting. We do not want to stray too far from our core idea.
Nevertheless, we have long been after a way to cover the smaller stories, but more importantly give a forum to discuss these general topics, especially if they are interesting. Now that we have 9to5Forums, we have come up with something we call “Asides.” The idea is to bring together a “linked list” type of format coupled with gratuitous linking and the PandoTicker or AllthingsD Voices method of spreading the best of the Web.
Here are the types of topics we will cover on Asides:
Mid-minor, but still interesting, Apple/Google news, tips, rumors—especially where there is not much to add from the source.
General technology news covering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. (if it is big and relates to our readers).
Quick observations that we would normally Tweet or retweet.
App promo codes or hardware giveaways.
Author news like “Mark will be writing/tweeting from Poland this week.”
Minor site news like outages or minor updates.
Anything interesting we do not find deserving of a full story.
We think we have found a new way to present these minor stories in a manner that has not been done before. Asides will appear chronologically on the website interspersed between regular posts (and in feeds and social media).
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However, you will only see the title on the web site, and it will be smaller than a full-sized story. We are working with WordPress on a way so these can open inline, but —for now— clicking on an Aside link will open a new page.
Our expectation is to post 20 or more of these per day. We hope you like Asides and find them useful. Expand Expanding Close
As of today, Twitter is baked into both iOS and MacOS X on a relatively low-level. Apple’s own social network Ping has yet to gather any steam in the marketplace. Facebook and Google are both growing their social networks like crazy while they are increasing in value.
Apple has $100 billion in its pocket, and CEO Tim Cook said at a recent Goldman Sachs event that he is looking for innovative ways to spend the money.
Instagram, Apple’s 2011 “App of the Year,” just released an update to its iOS application that includes a sleek user interface, tappable notifications, a new filter, and an enhancement feature.
The app is a free photo-manipulator that allows users to snap pictures, apply hip vintage filters, and then share their edited images through a built-in social network. Users can also share their creations through other services, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.
The newest version allots a much-needed facelift and provides a more modern appearance than the previous variant by displaying an overhauled header and menu buttons (as seen in the image to the right).
“We’ve simplified the look of Instagram,” announced the San Francisco-based Company in a blog post.
So, you are sitting in a coffee shop and looking around you —wondering whom the blonde-haired person is sitting by the window or even the bearded hipster serving the latte. Well, “Highlight” is a free social network app for iOS devices that can now let you creep the world within your vicinity.
Facebook helps users to organize online relationships while exploring professional networks, but it cannot help them interact with those in the “real” world. Whether social networkers are in a –well– coffee shop, or even a restaurant, clothing store, entertainment event or conference, strangers constantly surround them. Anyone is connectable through shared interests or mutual friends, but it is difficult to know who is nearby.
To change this circumstance, install Highlight onto an iPhone and connect to Facebook. The app will alert users to other Highlight users up to a block and half away. From there, profiles with information pulled from Facebook are viewable, and Highlight users can even send text messages to such profiles. The app essentially helps folks meet new people, while refreshing memory about past relationships and alerting users to friends who are nearby.
In a strange turn of fate, California-based Apple is moving to trademark the famed fruity logos once used by the Beatles, following a 23-year legal dispute between the two companies. Furthermore, Apple makes specific mention of a social network in the fourteen international classifications that cover possible uses for the two logos. How can Apple, Inc. claim ownership of the Beatles’ logos in the first place, you ask.
