Archive for: social
If you spend any time ’round these parts you’ll know we absolutely despise patents trolls *cough* Lodsys *cough*. And while Lodsys’ business model of suing small time developers is ridiculous in and of itself, a new India based patent troll by the name of “Kooltol” is even more repulsive. In short: Kooltol is but another cancer attempting to stifle actual inovation by suing a long list of tech companies including Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Foursquare and more over an apparent “invention” revolving around social feeds…
Like it or not, Google’s Gmail service is a seemingly insurmountable giant. With that said, there’s only so many ways to re-invent the wheel — in this case email in general — so many features you can add, and so many UI tweaks you can push out before the supply of creativity runs dry. But naysayers be damned, Yahoo is pushing ahead, and pushing Facebook and Twitter into your inbox…
Months of speculation finally culminated yesterday with reports that Twitter had officially closed the deal to acquire popular 3rd party Twitter app, TweetDeck.
Today, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo gives further insight on Twitter’s official company blog into the acquisition as well as answering one of the biggest questions revolving around Twitter’s motivations for purchasing TweetDeck thus far: Why?
In short: TweetDeck is for enterprise and power users. Bonus — Twitter will continue developing TweetDeck apps and services apart from their own core apps and services. Everyone happy? Full response after the break…
In a bizarre move yesterday, Twitter instructed third party developers via their official developer email list to stop developing stand alone Twitter applications. Usually, a service such as Twitter would be doing the exact opposite. What’s the deal? Twitter wants a more consistant user experience. According to Twitter’s Ryan Sarver, consumers are still confused between the various Twitter apps and how those Twitter apps present the core Twitter functions.
We can see both sides of the argument — how are new and innovative designs, features, and services supposed to develop if they are being artificially restricted? At the same time, how can Twitter grow their brand if it is becoming increasingly striated?
Currently, this request only affects potential 3rd party apps in development. No mention is made of already released apps receiving updates. However, enforcing such a mandate on already released apps seems downright ridiculous. We’ll see how this evolves in the coming weeks and months…
Update
After going through various iOS and Android Twitter apps, I find myself slightly miffed at Twitter’s stance here. They’re telling third party devs that they can do their own service better, and to let them handle the core app — at the same time they say Twitter app developers can further refine their apps to match Twitter’s own app. Excuse me Twitter, there are numerous Twitter apps better than your own. If anyone needs catching up to do, it’s you. Hello, multiple account support on Android…anytime soon…?
Flickr users and BlackBerry abusers need to find a new combination to swoon over. New text found inside a help article on RIM’s website points to an EOL date of March 1st, 2011 for Flickr For BlackBerry. After said date, users who want to upload pictures to Flickr will have to make use of the popular photo sharing site’s mobile web space. Considering that there aren’t really any noteworthy 3rd party replacements, BlackBerry users are going to find it a little more cumbersome to share the most favorite pictures with friends and family.
Anyone think it’s odd for RIM — A company who is constantly pushing their more consumer friendly image — to up and drop Flickr like that? Or is the lack of 98xx support and infrequent updates the real reason behind its death?
As suspected, RIM announced some upcoming changes in their BlackBerry Messenger platform that will coincide with increased social aspects of future OS updates. Indonesian blog, Kombb, managed to get some claimed preliminary details of BBM 6.0:
- Play games using your BBM username
- Cross-chat with users on BBM even without being their friends.
- BBM status will update dynamically depending on goals and accomplishments from games.
- BBM6 will be supported on all 5.x+ devices.
While RIM’s products aren’t typically geared specifically for consumers (as opposed to the corporate/enterprise market), these upcoming change certainly sound promising. But are they enough? My vote: RIM needs to get QNX on BlackBerry phones ASAP!
- December 28, 2010 9:39 am
If you’ve made a new home with one of the popular services and products including but not limited to iOS devices, OS X-powered computers, and location-based services such as Foursquare, the world is going to end in 2011. McAfee (recently acquired by Intel) released a forecast today naming various popular services and products that while currently low on the threat list, will grow increasingly murky as 2011 trudges on. Of course, coming from an arguably struggling virus software developer, such news of “impending attack” on numerous exploding platforms isn’t exactly all that surprising. In fact, it’s almost a cheap attempt to drum up fear and publicity in hopes of wooing a few new customers.
At this point, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out that when tech products and services become popular and therefore increase in user base and potential cash flow, so do attempts to crack/hack them.
Should you be careful with your shiny new iPad while you update Foursquare? Of course. But don’t resort to fear mongering and paranoia. Security will become a growing issue with popular consumer electronics and services, though nowhere as much as McAfee is hyping. Be at ease.
- December 17, 2010 8:13 am
The BlackBerry address book really isn’t all that “smart” for a modern smartphone. Reports surfacing from Gigaom this morning paint a brighter picture, however. According to industry sources, RIM and start-up “Gist” are in talks of a potential purchase. The same source say that a deal is actually quite close. Though as we all know, no deal is “close” until the ink is dry and money has begun exchanging hands. With that said, RIM could benefit greatly with Gist’s technology. RIM’s intentions with Gist technology once/if acquired are not yet known. But seeing as how it is a great feature geared towards contact management, the address book would be a good start.
On that note, Gist is a service that takes a person’s information strewn across the web and then organizes it into a neat and tidy business profile. Those profiles are then automatically attached to the ends of emails as a sort of super signature. Currently, their are plugins for Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Google Apps, as well as mobile services and apps for iPhone and Android.
Gist was originally founded by ex-Microsoft employee Paul Allen. Allen now heads Vulcan capital — the same group who also helped finance Gist in first round funding.
- November 23, 2010 2:49 pm
Fans of the popular BlackBerry Twitter app, UberTwitter, have a new sibling in the family. Today, the official UberTwitter iOS app launched in the App Store. With literally dozens of Twitter apps to choose between on iOS, how does UberTwitter stand out? That and more are just after the jump…
