Apple's white Iphone 4 is finally on the way

MAKER OF BLACK IPHONES Apple will start shipping a white version of the Iphone 4 within the next few weeks, ending a long series of delays for the pale incarnation of the iconic smartphone.

Bloomberg cited three anonymous sources who are aware of the company's plans. They revealed that AT&T and Verizon Wireless will be selling the device by the end of April and explained that the delay was partly due to the white paint peeling under heat and a bug with one of the sensors.

The Iphone 3GS and Ipad 2 are both available in white, which makes the Iphone 4 issues seem somewhat puzzling. We would have imagined that the same techniques that worked for them would be carried over to the latest Iphone, but somehow things kept going wrong along the way.

It is also believed that the next Iphone will not be announced in June, the traditional announcement period, but in September instead. It is not clear if this is a delay or an intentional move to make the most out of sales of the white Iphone.

Reuters also reported that Foxconn, a major supplier of components for Apple products, will assemble the white version of the Iphone 4. We expect this to involve more than slapping a layer of white acrylic over old Iphones.

The ivory Iphone was unveiled in June of last year, but consistent problems have led to a delay of nearly 10 months. The string of delay announcements over the past year led to it being dubbed by The INQUIRER "the Duke Nukem of mobile phones". µ

YouTube to invest $100M in 'channels' with original programming: report

The Wall Street Journal has reported that YouTube will open a series of "channels" with originaly programming, spending about $100 million in the process. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has continued to struggle in monetizing its service since Google acquired it in 2006.

According to the WSJ, YouTube will modify its homepage, and spotlight channels based on different topics. Reportedly, about 20 of those channels will feature "several hours of professionally produced original programming a week," some of these people said. Additional channels would be use content already on the site.

Most of YouTube's content comes from amateurs, and far more than "several hours" (x 20). That figure would amount to say, about 150 - 200 hours of original programming a week.

The idea, the anonymous sources told the WSJ, is for YouTube to tap into the Internet-powered TVs that are coming out, as well as other devices such as the iPad, Motorola Xoom and other tablets, and computers and smartphones, as well.

Google has been, so far, unwilling to pay licensing fees for original programming "on the same scale as Netflix and others," the report said. Thus, it is seeking a middle ground, by investing in its own programming instead of spending large sums of money to license content.

The sources added that the changes are expected to be phased in over time, beginning before the end of 2011. YouTube is currently in the midst of hiring people to help with these initiatives, the sources added.

Here we go again, with content providers wanting end users to use more bandwidth. Meanwhile, ISPs want us to use less, and continue to issue caps on usage, which means that some (such as Netflix) have to manage quality to ensure users don't go over their data tiers.

Via: WSJ

Grooveshark booted from Android Market; how to sideload it

Google has booted the music app Grooveshark from the Android Market. While it's still unclear as to the exact reason that the app was kicked out, the theory is that it was booted because of pressure over possible copyright violations.

>Grooveshark is a service that allows free music streaming via files that its users have posted to the site.

While the app is not in the Android Market any longer, and isn't in the Amazon Appstore either, you can still install it via sideloading. Unlike iOS, Android apps can be installed from other app repositories as long as the end user sets the appropriate setting in the Android OS.

From Settings, go to Applications and check the box next to Unknown Sources. Unfortunately, just as with the Amazon Appstore, which is based on sideloading as well, there's no easy way for AT&T users to do this as that carrier has seen fit to remove that setting. AT&T users can use the Sideload Wonder Machine (SWM) but it's not for the non-techie.

Grooveshark for Android, the app, is free, but in order to use it, you have to have a Grooveshark for Anywhere account that costs $9 / month. Therefore, downloading this APK (Android Application) file is not piracy.

You can download the file here. It's version 2.0.8; we're unclear if that is the latest version, but the file itself was discovered by BI, so we believe it to be legitimate. Hopefully, the company itself will post the APK on its own site.

Amazon Appstore's free app of the day, 4/7/2011: Wolfram Alpha

Amazon.com has promised a free app every day in the Amazon Appstore, and today's app is Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine.

>Wolfram Alpha is $1.99 in the Android Market, and normally is priced at $1.99 also in the Amazon Appstore (as noted previously, the two marketplaces sometimes have differing prices).

Wolfram Alpha's is mobile app that give access to the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine. Not a search engine per se, it's also available online. Rather than giving a simple list of links to a search query, it attempts to compute answers to questions. It's described on Wikipedia as:

an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine would.

The app is described as follows:

Whoever you are and whatever you do, Wolfram|Alpha delivers insight and understanding into any facet of your life. It's a revolutionary knowledge-querying computational engine.

Wolfram|Alpha doesn't search the web; it calculates answers based on dynamic computations.

Access Expert Knowledge Wherever You Are

"It's the first step toward a real artificial intelligence." - Gregory Chaitin, IBM emeritus computer scientist

Find out how much vitamin C is in a bowl of ice cream. Learn what European country has the fourth largest population of children. Compute solutions to difficult trig and calculus problems. Balance complex chemical equations. Discover what is overhead as you gaze up at the stars. Finally crack that crossword puzzle.

Get Answers With Wolfram|Alpha:

• Sunset Orlando two months from today
• Skychart at 8:00pm
• Words containing letters mpg
• Weather in Honolulu when Obama was born
• 4th largest child population in Europe
• Distance to moon / length AAA battery
• MSFT vs GM vs Citi
• Integrate x sin x log x
• y'' + sin y = cos x
• Pentane + O2 -> CO2 + water
• Young's modulus AISI 1080 steel

Unlike search engines, which suggest page links, Wolfram|Alpha answers inquiries by computing structured data. Voted the Best of What's New Grand Winner by Popular Science in 2009, it is considered a monumental leap forward in knowledge extraction. Wolfram|Alpha's goal is aimed at bringing instantly accessible systematic knowledge to the broadest range of people; regardless of profession or education level.

Wolfram Alpha is a little hard to get used to for those thinking of a typical search engine. However, it has a 4.5 star rating in the Android Market. In the nascent Amazon Appstore, it has a 4-star rating as well with 42 reviews.

The Amazon Appstore requires sideloading, which means that for now AT&T devices can't use it. As we noted before, however, there is a way to at least "reserve" these free apps for installation later, when AT&T corrects the issue, as it has promised.

Amazon opened up the Appstore despite a lawsuit by Apple, which has previously trademarked the term "App Store." Microsoft has filed an appeal against that trademark, saying the term is too generic.

Commodore 64 set to re-launch, same exterior with modern innards

The Commodore 64 was, for quite some time, a big hit. However, the company made some mistakes, and eventually fell by the wayside in the face of competition from the IBM PC and Apple. Now, it's about to return.

It was already known that the Commodore 64 (C64) would return in the "late spring," but it's now known that the C64 will return at the end of April. Barry Altman is president and CEO of Commodore USA, and he purchased the Commodore trademark in September of 2010 with the intention of reviving the company and brand.

Although there are plenty of laptops and all-in-one PCs around, desktop PCs still predominate, and those consist of a box for the motherboard, video cards, etc., while the keyboard and display are separate.  Altman hopes the C64 can make inroads with a retro-look and state of the art technology.

The C64 will look the same as it did before. It will have the keyboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, and other components internal to the same taupe brown/beige color colored rectangular box as before. Other colors will follow, but the internals of the device are significantly upgraded.

The C64 will sport a mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a dual-core 525 Atom CPU and an NVIDIA Ion2 graphics chipset. That not the most powerful combination, but it's way better than the original C64, which was introduced in 1982.

The original C64 sold for $595 had a Commodore KERNAL Operating system, with Commodore BASIC 2.0, and a MOS Technology 6510 CPU which ran at 1.023 MHz (NTSC version) or 0.985 MHz (PAL version). Compare that to today's CPUs which run at GHz speeds.

The RAM was 64KB (that's kilobytes, as opposed to the gigabytes of today with a 20KB ROM. Graphics were a VIC-II with 320 x 200 pixel resolution (something exceeded by today's smartphones), 16 colors (not 16 million), sprites, and raster interrupt.

It was primitive, but it was also well-loved. During the C64's lifetime (the company went out of business in 1994), sales totaled somewhere between 12.5 and 17 million units (there are no exact figures), which makes it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time.

The new version will not come with Windows pre-installed, but an end user can be add it. The system will come with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on CD, ready to install, and Commodore OS 1.0, along with emulation functionality and a classic game package, will be mailed to purchasers when available.

Pricing ranges all the way from $250 (for a pretty much empty chassis) to $895. Storage ranges as high as a 1TB hard drive, with RAM starting at 2GB (4GB is an option). The C64 can have either a slot-load DVD, tray-load DVD, or Blu-ray.

You can watch a cross-promotional video about the Blu-ray release of TRON: Legacy and the C64, below.

Feds begin investigating smartphone apps that share users' info with third parties

Pandora Media Inc. said on Monday that it has been subpoenaed as part of a federal grand-jury probe into the methods smartphone software handles personal data. Pandora disclosed the subpoena in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, but emphasized that it is "not a specific target of the investigation." The company said:

“We were served with a subpoena to produce documents in connection with a federal grand jury, which we believe was convened to investigate the information sharing processes of certain popular applications that run on the Apple and Android mobile platforms.”

Last year several reports (1, 2, 3) noted that both iOS and Android applications were sending information about the devices, their users and the locations of said uses to third parties, most notably advertising networks.

Pandora was one of the apps that was cited as sharing information with third parties. The app is cross-platform, and exists on Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, and BlackBerry OS. The December reports focused on Android and iOS, however.

The WSJ report said:

Legal experts said the probe was significant because it involved potentially criminal charges that could be applicable to numerous companies. Federal criminal probes of companies for online privacy violations are rare.

Federal laws prohibit unauthorized access to information. "This is a big hammer if the government chooses to use it," said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University.

Legal experts cautioned that companies rarely end up being charged with a crime in general and that the current probe could morph into a civil one, for possible violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Federal prosecutors can charge individuals or companies with violating the computer-fraud law either as a felony or misdemeanor and can also pursue civil charges. But legal experts said it's rare for a corporation to be end up being charged criminally in any kind of probe. More often, companies in the federal government's cross hairs reach non-prosecution or deferred-prosecution agreements that allow the targets to avoid being criminally charged in exchange for agreeing to concessions, including monetary payments or promising not to engage in future wrongdoing, among other things.

Makers of apps could also face complaints of fair and deceptive trade practices from the Federal Trade Commission. Such complaints can be aimed at companies that fail to tell customers how they're collecting information or are violating their own terms of service.

Given the large number of smartphone users, the companies could also face huge class-action lawsuits if facts emerge to support any government charges.

Many of the apps in both the Android Market and Apple's App Store are free, and ad-supported. Thus, some say, it's not that surprising that not only are the apps ad-supported, but that they are sending back such data. Nothing is free, and that part of the "deal" would appear to be part of the monetization process.

Whether or not consumers truly understand that, and if that then constitutes fraud, will be determined by this investigation.

Via: WSJ, BW

Amazon Appstore's free app of the day, 3/30/2011: Soundhound Infinity

Amazon.com has promised a free app every day in the Amazon Appstore, and today's app is Soundhound Infinity, a sound recognition app. There is a free version, as well, but the Infinity version has a widget you can put on your home screen for one-click access to the music recognition feature of the app.

[Users need to remember that at least for now, at the time of this writing, if you move the app to SD, widgets for that app will not work. This is a platform limitation.]

The free app on the launch day of the Amazon Appstore was Angry Birds Rio, which is exclusive to the Amazon Appstore for now, and which remains free for a unspecified limited time. It will carry a $0.99 price when that time passes.

Soundhound Infinity is $4.99 in both the Android Market, and normally is priced the same in the Amazon Appstore (as noted previously, the two marketplaces sometimes have differing prices).

It is described as follows:

SoundHound Infinity is instant music search and discovery, with the world's fastest music recognition. It is the ultimate music app, ad-free with unlimited usage and premium features.

Say it, tag it, sing it, hum it, or type it -- SoundHound Infinity offers every gateway of music search. Boasting the world's fastest music recognition, the world's only sing and hum recognition, and voice-directed search, it lets users find and explore music faster than ever before with rich content including cover art, videos, lyrics, song previews, recommendations, tour dates, and more, all with one tap access.

View lyrics, search for videos, or buy the MP3
SoundHound Infinity's Android home screen widget, included only in the paid version, allows you to put the SoundHound widget on your homescreen, giving you immediate, one-tap launching of the music recognition feature. A heavily requested feature by Android device users, the SoundHound widget is the fastest way to ID a song. Even if the song is about to end, you may still capture it!

Key Features

• Blazing fast music recognition: name tunes playing from a speaker in as little as 4 seconds
• The world's only viable singing and humming recognition
• Voice recognition music search: just speak a title or band name to check it out
• Lookup song lyrics
• Song previews allow you to listen and sample tops hits and new discoveries
• Buy link for instant music downloads, including Amazon MP3
• Song mapping allows you to see where you discovered your songs on a map, and can be viewed later in your History
• Social sharing: it's fast and easy to share your song IDs via Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and e-mail
• Optimized for both phones and tablets, including Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab

Soundhound Infinity has 9,093 ratings for a 4.5 average out of 5 in the Android Market. In the Amazon Appstore, it has 30 reviews, and is in the 4.5-star range.

That's a change from the normal Amazon Appstore critics: most of the apps that have been "set free" were much more critically judged in the Amazon Appstore than in the Android Market. In fact, Monday's Farm Frenzy was removed in favor of Newsweek Mobile after a furor over app permissions.

The Amazon Appstore requires sideloading, which means that for now AT&T devices can't use it. As we noted before, however, there is a way to at least "reserve" these free apps for installation later, when AT&T corrects the issue, as it has promised.

Amazon opened up the Appstore despite a lawsuit by Apple, which has previously trademarked the term "App Store." Microsoft has filed an appeal against that trademark, saying the term is too generic.

Missing Bronx Zoo cobra taunts zookeepers via Twitter

Last Friday afternoon was the last time a 20-inch Egyptian cobra was seen in its exhibit at New York's Bronx Zoo. It's been missing since then, but perhaps its keepers should have been looking at Twitter posts instead of in the reptile house.

It seems the venomous reptile, or some anonymous stand-in has been Tweeting as BronxZoosCobra since Monday. Even with the account around a day old, it already has nearly 100,000 followers. The Tweets are all coming from the Web, which means that the Bronx Zoo could simply contact Twitter to find out where the IP address of the cobra is located. His first Tweet:

I want to thank those animals from the movie "Madagascar." They were a real inspiration.

He, or she, is apparently having trouble getting his account verified by Twitter. As we noted earlier, Twitter is out of the verification game, and won't do it any longer except in special cases. The cobra Tweeted:

Hey @piersmorgan, @jack and @biz, What does a snake have to do to get this account verified?

In fact, an Egyptian cobra is extremely venomous, with a neurotoxin that is believed to have taken out Cleopatra. Zoo officials believe the cobra is hiding out in its enclosure in the reptile house, ensconced with a laptop, it appears.

Why Amazon leaped into the cloud without licenses: 'users acquired early usually stay put'

Although Amazon.com reportedly took a very strong stance with regards to its new digital music locker service, including both Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, it's reportedly looking into licensing the music uploaded to its music locker post-launch. Why then, would it take the aggressive step of launching before it reached that stage?

The answer is easily, when you think of things: to be first.

Earlier, Amazon.com portrayed its Cloud Drive service as just another storage medium. Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, said,

"We don't need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive."

That said, it's well known that both Apple and Google are investigating similar services, and are entrenched in negotiations over rights and licenses for the uploaded music.

However, C|Net reported the key to Amazon.com's decision to beat both of the other companies to the punch:

One studio source told me recently that research has shown digital-lockers users may be reluctant to switch after going to the trouble of uploading their media. The source said the studios saw the same thing with iTunes. People don't typically leave. That means any service that acquires a user first stands to keep him or her.

Since it was reported earlier last week that Google has begun testing Google Music internally, and it was reported earlier this month by Bloomberg that Apple is in the midst of negotiations with labels over licensing, Amazon.com saw the writing on the wall.


It made the decision to leap past Google and Apple, perhaps into lawyer-infested waters, but also, by being first, perhaps acquiring users it wouldn't (possibly) lose later.

[It's true that Apple's iDisk feature of MobileMe has similarly enabled users to manually upload their music (and other files) to the cloud for streaming playback, but manually. Apple also has not been publicizing this, perhaps because of negotiations for a more far-reaching program.]

What's next for the music labels? Legal options are always there, but the labels were apparently surprised by Amazon.com's actions. One spoke to Reuters:

That executive called the move "somewhat stunning" and noted that some within the media industry said the service might be illegal.

"I've never seen a company of their size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're trying to get licenses," said the executive, who requested anonymity because the discussions were not public.

Scalpers' prices: WWDC 2011 tickets sell on eBay for as much as $3,550

WWDC 2011 sold out in hours. That said, you might expect to see some eBay scalping, and you'd be right.

At the time of this writing, there are 9 auctions for WWDC tickets on eBay. To be clear, the official price for a single ticket was $1,500.

One auction has a bid of $1,100, with a BuyItNow price of $3,900. Ah, but there's free shipping. Another is at $1,725, with a BIN price of $4,599, but once again with free shipping.

Among the others which have bids are ones with bids of $2,125; $3,000; and $3,250.

Before anyone assumes that Apple will step in to halt these auctions, it doesn't appear that will be the case. A number of auctions have completed, including this one for $3,550.

We haven't looked at Craigslist, but it would be interesting to see what's going on there.