Archive for: ping!
- November 17, 2010 10:50 am
A few weeks back when Ping launched, this whole mini-war erupted because while initially there was Facebook support, it was pulled by Apple in the wee hours of the morning. People noticed, however. Following the Facebook blocking, Steve Jobs went on to say at a following keynote that “Facebook was requesting onerous terms”. He never divulged more than that, leaving the rest of us to wonder.
And now, yesterday at the Web 2.0 summit, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg shed a little more light on the issue by saying that the real reason Facebook and Ping don’t integrate is because of data reciprocity. Zuckerberg gave an example using Facebook and Zynga, stating that Facebook invested in infrastructure costs in turn for Zynga’s vast library of games. You know, give and take.
And that’s quite ironic…
- November 11, 2010 12:40 pm
Since it’s release back in early September, Ping hasn’t exactly caught on. The overall idea behind it is nice — a more social music experience. But now after several months for consumers and artists alike to try it out, it’s pretty evident that Ping is pretty useless. Compounding that fact is the whole Ping-Facebook integration issue which blew up a few days after Ping was launched and once visible “Facebook Connect” buttons and verbiage vanished.
But that changes today. Twitter just announced on their blog that Twitter is now deeply integrated with iTunes Ping. Besides the given of being able to find your Twitter friends on Ping, users will now also have the ability to tweet out Ping activity. But the coolest part of this new Ping-Twitter lovefest is that not only will Ping-Tweets link back to the song/artist in iTunes, but the songs tweeted out are actually able to be previewed in New Twitter’s right-side pane.
For those whom have so far found Ping boring and too closed off from society, this new partnership gives you a reason to check it out once more. I for one will give it another shot now that it has a sort of Last.fm-esque sharing/social ability to it — because I love last.fm. Anyone else open to giving Ping another try?
At first, Apple’s announcement of a social network of sorts built inside of iTunes was kind of exciting. The basic idea of tight iTunes integration and social networking features made a pretty decent product on paper. Furthermore, there’s millions of people using iTunes to download music from tens of thousands of artists. But reality thus far hasn’t been quite as nice. Currently, Ping employes a pretty shoddy (and slow) sign up process for artists, which has caused Ping to grow at a snails pace. But even after a couple of months to mature, is Ping any better?
I have a Ping account but don’t use it at all save for the first day of “OMG, something new and shiny to play with”. Spammers, on the other hand, have been using Ping — so much so Apple released a book-sized set of instructions for artists to follow. That book, mind you, reads like a 4th grade rule book. With that said, there will be plenty of artists who aren’t too keen on playing by Apple’s PG rules. No artists = no fanbase to interact with. And then there’s the whole issue of a saturated social space. With literally dozens of social networks, why is Ping any better or unique?
And so the basic question: Do you actually use Ping?
- September 30, 2010 2:29 pm
iTunes users running OS X, listen up: Do you hate the new vertical control buttons in iTunes? What about the new Ping drop down that pops up inline with every song in your playlist? Personally, I don’t mind either of the new additions. I do wish, however, that Apple would get a little more consistent with UI design choices. But that’s a discussion for another day.
Back on topic — If you are aching for the old look pre-vertical buttons/ping, you’re in luck. Mac Observer has two simple Terminal commands that you can enter to revert things back to the way they used to be. All you’ve got to do is stop on by Mac Observer, and within 1-2 minutes you’ll be back to computing like it’s 2010…August-ish 2010 that is.
Many iPhone users on AT&T in the U.S. usually spend at least a small part of each day rationalizing why their coverage or network performance sucks so bad. Everything from hardware to network problems cross their minds as they desperately seek an answer. Many will claim that AT&T simply needs to add more towers as increased network load from increasingly dense cities puts an ever increasing load on each tower. But is that really the answer? Could be something as simple as an improperly configured network? Surely they must have that part down…right? Maybe not.
According to Brough Turner, a telecommunications employee since 1983, AT&T does in fact have an improperly configured network sighting examples of how ping times on AT&T are most often either really good or really bad with no real middle ground/grey area. More specifically, Brough Tuner states that “misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network” are the sole reason AT&T’s network sucks. Further supporting his hypothesis, IntoMobile states simple facts regarding population density in Shanghai whom back in 2007, had a staggering average of 13,400 people per square kilometer. That’s insane! Even still, Shanghai was only ranked as the 10th most densely populated city. Now take into account that a bulk of AT&T’s problems in the US occur in large cities where densities are sky high. Sky high on a national scale however, as globally speaking, the most densely populated U.S. city is that of Los Angeles with a paltry 2,700 people per square kilometer and a ranking of 90th place when population densities are concerned. As you can see, the problems here in the U.S. are a fraction of what China goes through, yet they somehow manage to keep their networks up and running without the ridiculous problems that plague us stateside.
So what is AT&T’s problem? It’s anybody’s guess. Does Turner’s hypothesis have any weight? Sure it does. But AT&T will deny any such issue and repeat the same “huge increase in demand line”. While true, you can only blame demand for so long before people begin questioning you as to why it’s taking so long to fix the issue at hand.
IntoMobile > Slashdot > Brough Turner
Image Source
Ok folks, say goodbye to having to pay double on cellphone bills. Well, at least if your texting buddies all have iPhones that is. Introducing Ping! (iTunes Link) for iPhone. Ping! is an iPhone-to-iPhone messaging app available in the App Store for $0.99. It operates much like BlackBerry Messenger does for BlackBerry — letting you message for free between BlackBerry to BlackBerry and in this case, iPhone to iPhone. The way it works is also very BlackBerry Messenger-esque as it issues each Ping! user a unique ID (BlackBerry -> pin#) and sends messages over data much like how sending/receiving email works. Even better, the app comes with full push capability meaning you don’t have to needlessly keep the app continuously open to fully use it.
Finally an iChat-like app for iPhone. While it isn’t quite as polished as an inhouse device-to-device messaging app as the setup has some rather code like “String_To” text which may throw less tech savvy off guard, you can’t deny the money you could be saving will make you a much happier person. Now if you can just get all of your friends to get iPhones you can totally dump your texting plan.
One other interesting tidbit worth mentioning: iPod Touch users can get in on the action too since Ping! sends messages via data and not cellular. Pretty sweet huh!
**If you’re wondering why I didn’t take a snapshot of the app on my phone, well, I simply don’t have any friends using the app yet. *sad face*
**Update 2: Guess I should read the FAQ’s. The “String_” error you see below is because of a language support issue. My iPhone is currently in German which is obviously causing a problem. Switching to “English” in the iPhone preferences will correct. *hangs head* …common sense.
**Update: Anyone having any problems with proper names not showing up? Instead of “Ping!” showing up on the title bar when inside the app I have what you see below:
Mashable
