Suddenly, Amazon announced the availability of Kindle for Mac app. As if sending a signal to all Mac users planning to buy the iPad for e-book reading purpose that they can do the same thing with their current machine. That they don’t need to spend some precious $525 dollar just to have an e-book reader. They can do so with their existing machine and with the help of Amazon’s Kindle for Mac.
Now that I have let that issue out, let’s get into the details of the Kindle for Mac. Features? Pretty much what the application can do with its other iteration – Kindle for PC, Kindle for iPhone, and Kindle for BlackBerry.
Some of these features will let you:
Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Amazon also promise to roll out some more features soon. These include – full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights. Kindle for Mac is available as a free download requiring around 20MB of your Mac’s storage. It works for all Intel Mac models. Ready to take this app for a spin? Here’s the download link - www.amazon.com/kindleformac.
Have you often looked up to the sky at night and keeps on wondering what could be out there in the vast universe? Have you ever wished that you can check the sparkling stars and name each and everyone of them without using a high-powered telescope in some laboratory? Well, now you can, right smack on your computer screen. Thanks for Bing Maps and the World Wide Telescope (WWT) application.
The WWT application lets you explore the constellations and other known space objects similar to how you navigate through a regular Bing Map. It utilizes Microsoft Silverlight client right in Bing Maps and provides real time information about how the space is moving over the Earth. If you’ve been using Bing Maps before you’d pretty much have an idea how to go through the WWT application and navigate your way through the virtua stars and constellation unfolding right in front of you.
Now, here’s the coolest part. When you’ve selected a particular spot, you can click on it and the WWT application will shift to Bing Maps Street View. Giving you the sweet spot on earth where you should have been if you were actually looking at the sky using a real telescope. Sweet, right? This feature was demonstrated at the last TED event actually.
Want to go stargazing tonight? Check out the Bing Maps World Wide Telescope app. Make sure that you have Microsoft Silverlight installed on your computer to make the app work.
We all know that there’s a great pool of musical talents awaiting to be discovered on YouTube. In fact, we’ve seen several of them got famous already. To push its continual expansion and to help more YouTube users who got what it takes to become famous, YouTube has launched its Partner Program for musicians dubbed – Musicians Wanted.
If you believe that you have the talent to enthrall the billions of YouTube users globally with your musical talent then if I were you I’d sign up for the YouTube Partner Program for musicians right now. As in right now, before somebody else gets discovered instead of you.
If you’ve been uploading videos of you singing out Rihanna’s “Umbrella” or Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” for your friends to see and watch, why not let those videos earn some extra bucks for yourself. Who knows, you might become the next OK Go, a little band who uploaded a couple of videos that went viral on YouTube. This lead the group to start their own indie label as a result of their 30-seconds-to-fame video on YouTube.
Take it from the group’s Damien Kulas explaining how YouTube can propel your budding music carrer into new heights.
“YouTube has always been a great match for OK Go – creativity flourishes and we can connect directly with our fans. So when we heard about Musicians Wanted, it was a no-brainer: it sounds great for us. We’re honored and excited to be the first applicants. We can’t wait to get new videos up on our channel.”
Alright, what are you waiting for? Apply now for the YouTube Partner Program Musician’s Wanted gig.
Since everybody in the mobile tech scene are all agog about mobile applications right now, here’s an interesting report called – Sizing Up the Global Mobile Apps Market. According to the study, the overall mobile apps download could grow at the rate of 92% from 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 million by 2012.
In terms of revenue, mobile ads and virtual goods is expected to bring in 62% more from a mere $4.1 billion in 2009 to around $17.5 billion by 2012. These include revenues from both paid and free apps. Free apps developers get to earn through mobile ads peppered on their applications’ interfaces.
The study also highlighted the contributions made by Apple’s Apps Store in sparking new interests into mobile apps. Actually mobile apps have been around since the nineties, but only reached its peak of success when Apple launched its Apps Store. True enough, we’ve only heard about the Google Android Market recently. And soon after the BlackBerry App World, WebOS apps market, and even Nokia’s Ovi store which houses its mobile apps gained some recognition and online mileage.
To achieve this growth, creative strategies should be implemented by countries to attract new customers and different business models since the dynamics of the app market varies in emerging nations. The mobile apps ecosystem will prosper if some actions to enhance discovery, improve user experience, drop price barriers and increase developer revenue share are adapted.
Whether we all like it or not, the Apple iPad has already marked its niche into the electronics industry. Despite the fact that it hasn’t even arrived on any user’s lap yet, the iPad, despite the many flaws and shortcomings thrown at it by critics is now becoming a benchmark for all other tablet PCs that are to be released by other manufacturers.
Take the case of Samsung which is reportedly preparing their own slate-like tablet PC. According to Philip Newton – Samsung Australia’s director of IT Division, Samsung’s planned slate PC will boast of PC-grade processor and connectivity. It will be powerful enough that will drive users to make it as their primary computing devices. Incidentally, in case you’re not aware this is one feature that the iPad won’t probably achieved with any of its soon-to-be-released units.
Speaking at the Samsung Forum in Singapore, Mr. Newton even hits on the iPad saying that it lacks the processing power and connectivity features that slate-type platforms should have to spark interests among users. Mr. Newton even said that those Atom-powered devices even have more potential than the iPad has.
Is this a hint that the Samsung slate PC will be running on Android? Unfortunately, that remains to be seen, since details and information about the Samsung slate PC are not yet known.
The good news is, we only have to wait until the second half of this year as Samsung promises to deliver the said device by then. In case you’re doubting Samsung’s capabilities to come with mini-computing device, just take a look at the picture above which is actually the Samsung Q1 UMPC released sometime in 2006. Unfortunately that UMPC didn’t reap much success for Samsung. But hey, who knows, with the interest on tablet-like devices today, Samsung might actually become successful with this one.
Following their report that Facebook has just beaten Google again as the U.S. most visited site, Hitwise is now reporting another Facebook triumph. This time is has something to do with where people go to if they want to know the latest and most breaking news. Opsie! Sorry folks, you’re wrong, not from Twitter but from Facebook.
According to Hitwise, Twitter is only at the no.39 of the list of which sites people go for breaking news. And you’ve guessed it right, Facebook is almost at the lead, landing at the no. 3 spot. It even beat Google which is at eleventh place.
Additionally, Facebook drives 3.64% traffic to news and media sites, followed by Google with 1.27% and Twitter accounting for only 0.14% of traffic driven to those sites.
Now, here’s a rather interesting point raised by Hitwise’s data. Twitter visits may have more than doubled and yet where could these visitors go to right after they’ve gone through Twitter.com? According to the report, majority of those visitors go to social networking and entertainment sites.
But wait, how come then that Twitter is hailed as the new media news source if it doesn’t even comes close to Facebook as leader in driving traffic to news sites. Venture Beat has an interesting analysis. According to VB, those news posted on Twitter timeline came from variety of sources. And most often than not those tweets do not link back to the “traditional media” source of news. Another reason is the fact that most of the news reported by Twitter users are based on their experiences and were not yet reported by news media sites.
There you go folks, it looks like we need to call Facebook as the new king of new media news source and take the title away from Twitter now.
Earlier today, mobile analytics company Flurry published a report about the dismal performance of the Google Nexus One in terms of its day 74 sales from the first day it was released. According to the report, Google was able to ship only 0.135 million units of the Nexus One. Flurry then compared this with the day 74 sales of both the iPhone and Motorola Droid which were 1 million and 1.05 million units respectively.
The report certainly is not a good publicity for the Nexus One especially since Google hasn’t gone all out in terms of marketing its first major fully branded handset.
A couple of hours later, Google announced that unlocked version of the Nexus One that is compatible with AT&T 3G network and Roger Wireless in Canada is now available for sale at the Google online store. In addition, this new version of Nexus One will also run on GSM operators worldwide.
I’m not saying that Flurry’s report has anything to do with Google’s decision to announce the availability of the AT&T and Roger Wireless compatible Nexus One versions. But we just can’t discount this fact since Google certainly wants to protect its investment from any bad publicity, whatsoever.
Google also announced that this new Nexus One can now be ordered from Google’s web store and can be shipped to Canada. As you all know, Google only ships the Nexus One to the U.S., HongKong, Singapore and the UK.
The AT&T and Roger Wireless compatible Nexus One get the same price as the previously released unlocked Nexus One – $529.
While everybody else is making their own scenes and carving their niche on the ever growing smartphone market, Microsoft seem to have been lagging behind. Even Palm made some minor marks recently with their latest WebOS and smartphone kits. Fortunately for Microsoft, their time is now. And at their annual developers conference dubbed Mixx 10, Microsoft sure has some great plans ahead in sparking up their mobile business.
A Feature-Rich Windows Phone 7 Platform
At the heart of Microsoft’s strategy to regain what was once occupied by Windows Mobile platform in the smartphone market is the new Windows Phone 7 Series Platform. This new platform combines Microsoft Silverligh features to develop rich applications and XNA Framework for games. It aims to empower developers and designers to develop visually stunning and immersive apps and games – something at the level of most iPhone games and apps perhaps?
Anyway, the new Windows Phone 7 Platform offers the following features:
accelerometer and intuitive control
Microsoft Location Service
Microsoft Notification Service
Hardware-accelerated video with DRM
Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming
Multitouch
Camer and microphone support
To push this objective, Microsoft is pushing out its free tools for developers and designers including – Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7 Series add-in, XNA Game Studio 4.0, Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator and Expression Blend for Windows Phone Community Technology Preview. More →
How about this folks? Imagine a printed version of Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged weighing around 12.5 pounds. But thanks to data compression and digital technology, that bulky dictionary can now be housed, accessed and used on a 25MB space in your mobile phone. To be specific about it – the Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on your BlackBerry phones.
Wait, but that’s not all that you can have on your BlackBerry device, but the whole Merriam-Webster dictionary lines via a mobile application developed by Paragon Software Group of California. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary app supports all BlackBerry Smartphones with OS version 4.2.1 and higher, except the BlackBerry Storm.
The application features – online update or over-the-air program updates, dictionary database installable on flash cards, hyperlinks between related articles and directions, search history, online dictionary catalog that provides one-click access to other Merriam-Webster Dictonaries, multilingual interface and no internet connection required.
But before you check out the BlackBerry App World to download the app, be prepared to spend some extra dough since this apps are not for free. The complete line of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and their selling price are as follow:
First Lady Michelle Obama and the USDA has launched a competition for developers, game designers and students to develop the most fun and engaging tools and games that will encourage children, specifically “tweens” (ages 9-12) to eat better and be more physically healthy and active.
Apps for Healthy Kids aims to halt the increasing rate of obesity among children which have tripled in the past 30 years which may shorten the expect lifespan of chilren.
If you’re up for the challenge, the Apps for Healthy Kids is requiring that any tools and games that you will develop be built based on USDA nutrition dataset which is available through the Open Government Initiative. These datasets provide information on total calories, calories from “extras” and MyPyramid food groups for over 1,000 commonly eaten foods.
So here’s how you can enter the contest:
During the competition submission period (March 10 – June 30, 2010), first register here (registration is free) and read the complete Official Rules and Questions and Answers. After you register you must verify your email address via the registration email sent to the email entered in the registration form. You will then be able to enter a submission. Fill out the submission form on the submit application tab, including your submission title, text description, link to game or tool, data set(s) used, and whether you are submitting in the “tool” or “game” category. A picture is optional but helpful. Be sure to read the terms and conditions, and if you agree, check off the box, and submit!
Finally, the prize, not much at $40,000 but hey, it’s for a good cause anyway.
