Archive for August 17th, 2009

digg_url =’http://digg.com/apple/iPhone_graced_with_HTC_s_Sense_UI_theme_beauty_ensues’; Sure, Taiwanese HTC Magic owners might be happy today, being promised Hero’s Sense UI via official channels, but thanks to the hard work from Redmond Pie deviantART member Justflikwalk, this very stylish skin has jumped species and landed on the iPhone. A jailbreak is required, but once past that hurdle, you’ll get a new home page with the ever-so-classy time and weather widget — which isn’t always 73 degrees and sunny, we might add — a quick launcher for apps / contacts, and of course some modified icons. All pertinent files for the theme and step-by-step instructions are available via the read. Care to gaze upon the awesomeness using the power of moving pictures? Video after the break.

[Thanks, David]

Continue reading iPhone graced with HTC’s Sense UI theme, beauty ensues

Filed under: Cellphones

iPhone graced with HTC’s Sense UI theme, beauty ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Cellphones

iBurgh complaint department for iPhone gets to the heart of city living originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As more details emerge about the MySpace-iLike acquisition, all sorts of interesting observations and questions pop up. A few thoughts:

The Facebook Angle

This is by far the most interesting angle to the deal. iLike is the most popular music application on Facebook, and is the de facto Facebook Music app. That company will shortly be owned by MySpace, Facebook’s primary competitor. That puts Facebook in a lose-lose situation. They can let iLike continue to dominate the music scene on Facebook and let MySpace own all that. Or they can ban iLike and lose all credibility with their platform – everyone would know iLike was banned because of the acquisition by MySpace. And it doesn’t have to be an outright ban. Facebook has plenty of subtle ways of trainwrecking an application they don’t like. Keep an eye on this.

Why didn’t Facebook just buy iLike? A matching or slightly better offer than the $20 million MySpace is paying would likely have gotten the deal done. And it may have saved Facebook from an embarrassing situation.

If I were MySpace, I’d focus on getting their free streaming music into the iLike Facebook application as soon as possible. Advertisers will love it.

A Manifesto

I believe in Twitter. I believe people want to use it and that it is useful to them. I’m less sure of its susceptibility to monetization, but then again, I cover cameras and ramen-bots, not internet business. Still, since I’m coming down to the TechCrunch 50 conference in a few weeks, and will likely be the only person attending who does not use Twitter, I felt I should furnish an explanation. Not that I think it really matters to anyone whether I use it or not, but by striking preemptively, I’ll avoid talking myself hoarse in explaining it repeatedly to those of you I meet. I’m also curious to see if there are any other “abstwainers” (or better yet, “Tweetotallers,” either way I’ve coined a term) in the TechCrunch readership, and if so, what your perspective is.

Now, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for a chance to express myself on this (which may be why it is so very long (though my parenthetical style of writing shares the blame)), but it seems relevant enough and the timing is right. Please bear in mind that these are my own reasons for not using the service, not reasons for you to stop; I don’t mean to proselytize. I’ll start with my primary assertion: that a tweet is fundamentally valueless.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/Manual_for_Garmin_s_connected_nuvi_1690_reveals_nuinfo’; The connected PND, by most accounts, is a dying breed. Dash couldn’t pull it off, TomTom’s execution was downright pathetic and no one even remembers that Insignia made one. But considering that Garmin’s nüvi range has always delivered, we’re going to let the nüvi 1690 ship before passing judgment. Said navigator, which just slipped into the FCC’s database a fortnight ago, didn’t have too many details attached to it, but a recently discovered user manual reveals that although Garmin’s local-data service will be powered by Google, the company has branded it with the virtually-unpronounceable name “nuinfo.” Yeah, we have no idea, but we’re definitely interested in finding out what the ultimate plan is — the shots of the device in the manual lead us to believe that local weather information will be on tap in addition to the usual waypoint searching and so forth, but unless Garmin throws these so-called “connected services” in gratis, every smartphone owner on the planet will simply laugh and move on.

[Via GPS Tracklog]

Filed under: GPS

User manual for Garmin’s connected nuvi 1690 reveals “nuinfo” service branding originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, this is rich. The Nambu Network, owners of the URL-shortening service Tr.im announced today that the service will go open source on or before September 15 of this year. That’s odd since the service has now gone from completely shutting down, to trying hard to sell, to bringing the service back up so it can sell, to now going open source in just 8 days.

Let me be clear, going open source is a great idea, I’m not sure if it will help Tr.im all that much, but on paper it sounds great. That’s what they should have done originally. But in a post today on Tr.im’s blog the service first apologizes for this whole fiasco, and then attempts to place blame elsewhere. As I read it, it’s either Bit.ly’s fault for making a low-ball offer to buy the Tr.im, Twitter’s fault for picking Bit.ly over Tr.im as its URL shortener of choice, 301works.org‘s fault for being a “public relations stunt”, and yes, even TechCrunch’s fault because we “simply repeat vertbatim what twitter/bit.ly feeds [us]“.

We’ve long since known that Apple (as opposed to AT&T) was getting the better end of the pair’s exclusive partnership here in America, but new research from Strand Consult has found that the situation is fairly similar all around the globe. According to the report, nary a single telecom operator it studied had seen a boost in market share, revenue or earnings as a result of introducing the iPhone, and some carriers even issued profit warnings due to the heavily subsidized handset. The study goes on to shed pity on firms like SingTel and TeliaSonera, both of which are purportedly seeing margins and ARPU (average revenues per subscriber) sink due to Apple’s darling joining the fray. But really, we can’t help but express our doubts about the all encompassing, almost sensationalized nature of this; we’ve watched AT&T’s profits soar ever since it snagged the iPhone, and considering that every iPhone buyer also coughs up a significant monthly fee for a data plan, we can’t imagine revenues tanking that severely. Or, you know, maybe we’re all just getting a really good deal on our bloated iPhone plans.

Continue reading Research finds iPhone hurting operators, Boy George unavailable for comment

Filed under: Cellphones

Research finds iPhone hurting operators, Boy George unavailable for comment originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Live video streaming service Ustream is being sued by Square Ring, Inc, a boxing promotional company owned by professional boxer Roy Jones, Jr. The suit alleges that Ustream has committed “massive and blatant copyright infringement” by allowing 2,377 users to view a broadcast of the fight Roy Jones Jr. vs Omar Sheika free of charge. Furthermore, the suit says that Ustream has ignored repeated requests by Square Ring Inc. to gather more information about the infringement. From the suit:

Following the illegal exhibition of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Broadcast on USTREAM’s website on March 21, 2009, notifying Defendants of the copyright and trademark infringements and, in a good faith effort to avoid litigation, requested information pursuant to Rules 26 and 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Local news always seems to get the short end of the stick, both in terms of coverage and advertising dollars. And as the entire newspaper industry continues to struggle for survival, the prospects for local news looks particularly bleak. It just doesn’t pay to have a reporter cover a neighborhood farmer’s market when she could be covering the Mayor’s office or something with broader appeal. And so traditional news organizations are abandoning local and hyperlocal news.

Don’t worry, though. Media consultant, blogger, and CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis has a few ideas for how to replace the local newspaper with new business models for news at the hyperlocal level. He just gave a presentation at an Aspen Institute forum on journalism today (live stream).

His answer is to organize local bloggers and citizens into a metro-wide network in each of the top 25 markets, and sell local ads across their sites. Each hyperlocal site would remain independent but join a loose federation for ad sales, distribution, and shared costs. Jarvis sketches out what a new news organization might look like at the local level, and goes out on a limb by offering actual spreadsheets showing some assumptions about audience size and how the business model would work. There is also a spreadsheet for doing this through a non-profit.

Now that Samsung’s standardized on the TouchWiz interface across its entire touchscreen line — dumbphone and smartphone alike — they’ve created a fertile playground that offers developers the opportunity to reach a good chunk of the world’s second largest phone manufacturer’s devices. A dedicated software development kit for TouchWiz is now available direct from Samsung, and since your average code monkey doesn’t necessarily have access to fifteen different phones running multiple versions of every platform Sammy supports, they’re also offering up their Virtual Device Lab that’ll let devs test their wares on everything the company has on tap. For distribution, Samsung will have a number of channels available: its Application Store, a new Widget Gallery that’ll premiere on Verizon’s Omnia II launching later this year, and — perhaps most tantalizingly for developers — the possibility of inclusion right in the frickin’ ROM if Samsung really loves what you’ve done. Considering that you’re targeting S60, WinMo, and a wealth of proprietary OS devices in one fell swoop, this could end up being a huge distribution channel.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Samsung launches TouchWiz SDK for cross-platform bliss originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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