Archive for February 10th, 2011

INQ announce a duo of Facebook phones

Our fellow Londoners at INQ have announced two new socially orientated phones, the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q. Both feature deep enough Facebook integration (using Facebook’s Social Graph API) to earn the title of ‘Facebook phone’ and rightly so – access to your Facebook Wall, Messages, Friends, Chat and Notifications are all available straight from the homescreens. Both phones also feature TouchType’s Fluency Prediction Engine which guesses the words you’re about to type based on your previous tendencies and some black magic. They’ll also feature Spotify integration for the musical duties.

As for the phone’s themselves, the Cloud Touch is a full-touch Android 2.2 based affair with a 3.5 inch HVGA touchscreen and 5MP camera. The Cloud Q has exactly the same specs but trades the large screen for a qwerty keyboard. The Cloud Touch is expected to be available in April and the Cloud Q sometime in Q3.

For full specs and information, see the press release after the break.

BBC iPlayer app for iPad and Android

Good news for those of you that like to catch up on a spot of TV or radio on a mobile device. The BBC iPlayer app is now available for both the iPad and Android. I know that the Android one is currently restricted to the UK but i am not sure about the iPad version.

Having tested it out on my iPad and it seems to work flawlessly and best of all it is free.

Go check it out in your respective app stores.

Posted by: James

Video on Skype coming soon to Android

Got an Android phone with a front facing camera? Or a Tablet and want to do the video conferencing damn near all of them advertised? Well, February 28th could be a good date for you. Rumour has it that there will be an update for Skype on Androidy platforms that will include video chattery. Can’t imagine the networks being particularly enthusiastic about it so I imagine it might just be wi-fi only after a short time but the fact that it might just allow for some nice cross platform conferencing will be a winner.

[Source]

Posted by Gareth

Sony Reader app barred from App Store, Kindle lives on

Despite Amazon’s Kindle app being available on the App Store for quite some time, you’d think that Sony’s Reader app would also be given the green light. But you’d be wrong. Clearly, Sony didn’t read the Apple bible to app heaven closely enough as their app has been rejected on the terms that it features in-app purchases of books without passing through Apple’s own API for in-app purchases (which would crucially bypass Apple’s 30% cut in sales).

The condition that purchases must go through Apple has in fact been in the guidelines all along, but the Kindle app was allowed through -  it directs you to a mobile site in Safari instead. However, Apple also highlighted another term in the guidelines; you can’t sell goods and services outside of your app. Surely that means Amazon is infringing too, but no word from either Apple nor Amazon has been said about what to do about it.

Sony have already stated they promise to pursue “other avenues to bring the Reader experience to Apple mobile devices.” This will probably mean they’ll end up (reluctantly) giving Apple their 30% share of sales. But what will it mean for Amazon? Their app sells books outside of the Kindle application which technically is an infringement of the guidelines that should result in the boot from the App Store. Considering the size of Amazon and the number of iOS devices out there, that 30% is a big deal. Eventually, they’ll have to update their app to either cut Apple in or disable in-app purchasing altogether (though what will become of their “Buy Once, Read Anywhere” slogan?). Either way Apple wins – they either get their fair share or people will have to turn to their home-grown iBook store, but what would happen to your vast Kindle library that you used to read on your iDevice? Maybe paper books weren’t such a bad idea after all.

Posted by: Vince