(jeffisageek) readling list

World's first PC game, co-written by Bill Gates, remade for iOS

Ryan Heise — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:41:01 PST

If you were shocked when Microsoft released Kinectimals for iOS last December, here's another App Store surprise with a deep Redmond connection — the world's first PC game, DONKEY.BAS, co-written by Bill Gates. Developer XVision created the remake of the "great grandma of all racing games" as an homage to the 1981 original, which was written by Gates and Neil Konzen, an early Microsoft employee. The game retains the original's 8-bit graphics and sounds, as well as the simple one-button control to manically change lanes in order to avoid oncoming donkeys. Another remake had previously been released for Windows Phone 7, a somewhat more fitting home considering the game's roots. While DONKEY.BAS first shipped pre-installed on PC-DOS and...

Type This Into Google for a Valentine’s Day Surprise

Samantha Murphy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:25:05 PST

Romantic math geeks, your moment has arrived. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, go ahead and type (or paste) this into Google search:

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

Twitter user @Huckberry tipped us off to the fact that typing in the algebraic equation plots several different functions on a graph that forms the shape of a heart.

The series includes various square roots, absolute values and cosine functions — mathematical functions often taught in high school math courses. The plotted lines change direction due to the absolute value function flipping the sign of the x-coordinate, creating a mirror image across the y-axis.

The “cos(300x)” part of the formula was also written to make the line go quickly up and down as it traces out the interior of the heart. This creates the colored-in effect. Meanwhile, if you change the “300″ number in the equation to “500,” the color fills up the heart. That part of the formula is related to frequency.

Although the equation wasn’t written by Google, this is not the first time users have been able to type in certain keywords into search for a seasonal surprise. For example, type “Do a barrel roll” and the word “askew” into Google. Check out some more fun search tricks in the gallery below — and let us know in the comments if we’ve missed any.

Beyond Barrel Roll: 10 Hidden Google Tricks

Gravity

Enter "Google Gravity" in the search bar. Hit "I'm feeling lucky" (if you have Google Instant enabled, it's on the right hand side of the suggested searches). Then watch your world fall down.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Barrel Roll, easter eggs, Google, trending, valentine's day

Create incredible animated GIFs on your iPhone with Cinemagram

Jeff Cormier — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:23:06 PST

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S the primary reason I upgraded from the iPhone 4 were the improvements made to the device’s camera – adding a backlit CMOS sensor, a custom image processing chip and a huge increase in shutter release speed.

By no means am I a great photographer, but my iPhone is always with me, and I love snapping pictures with it at every opportunity.

It’s no surprise then that my favorite iPhone apps are related to photography and when presented with the opportunity to test a new one I jumped at it.

The app in question is Cinemagram from Montreal-based Factyle Inc., makers of Smartr – not that Smartr - and not only is it an absolute delight to use, it’s unlike any other app you’ve seen before.

For those unfamiliar, cinemagraphs are still photos featuring minor, repeated movements. Usually published in an animated GIF format, they are commonly produced by taking a series of photographs or a video recording, and, using image editing software, compositing the photographs or the video frames into a seamless loop of sequential frames.

Cinemagram has taken what is a complex, arduous process and made it tremendously simple. In fact, creating a cinemagraph with the app requires only four steps:

Film a short video clip 2-3s
Animate a small region
Apply a filter should you desire
Share to Twitter/Tumblr and Facebook

Once complete, here are two finished products (the first mine, the second by one with some talent):

Pretty slick, no?

Cinemagram’s Temo Chalasani explains the motivation behind Cinemagram:

“We’ve been fascinated by this art form since its first appearance last year in the world of fashion photography. We see it as a way for photographers to bring out the essence of an image, and tell the story behind their pictures in a fun and beautiful way.

We were shocked that photographers all around the world would spend hours in photoshop trying to create one. We wanted to make it possible for anybody to create them with zero photoshop knowledge, and in a matter of seconds.”

Cinemagram does just that using a dead-simple user interface, while including a very helpful guide for those who want a little extra coaching when crafting a work of art with the app.

If you love capturing iPhone photos, and want to create a new, incredible hybrid between a photo and video, Cinemagram is an fantastic app you’ll want to pick up at once!

➤ Cinemagram , via the App Store

GitHub Wants to Teach Kids to Code with the First US CoderDojo

Joe Brockmeier — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:30:00 PST

If you have kids (or you are one) and you're in or near the San Francisco area, you might want to sign up for the GitHub-sponsored CoderDojo coming on February 25th. CoderDojo is a free, not-for-profit movement with a strong open source emphasis on open source that seeks to teach young people how to code and make learning "a fun, sociable, kick ass experience."

The organization was founded by James Whelton and Bill Liao, and has focused mostly on Ireland until now. (There's also a CoderDojo in London.) The program is for kids between seven and 18, and according to GitHub's Cameron McEfee has been teaching "HTML, CSS, Javascript, iOS app development, and pretty much anything else they think sounds awesome." Kids also get guest lectures from tech mentors and tours of tech companies, in addition to instruction on development.

Sponsor

The sessions cost nothing, and kids that can't bring their own laptops will be provided with one. McEfee says "Each class is taught by a professional in the given topic. To help create the best environment for kids to ask questions, there is a mentor for every three kids in a session. For all this awesome learning potential there is only one requirement: 'Above all, be cool.'"

CoderDojo uses a series of badges and belts to recognize ability and achievements. Kids earn badges in categories like HTML or JavaScript by meeting criteria like creating a Web site using certain Javascript features. After a certain number of badges, kids level up in the belt system.

The session is from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the GitHub HQ in San Francisco. You can sign up via the CoderDojo site but space is limited. Follow the @CoderDojoSF Twitter account for more info, and see McEfee's talk about CoderDojo to learn more about the program.

Discuss

Live LOLz: Cheezburger Plans Grammy Awards Memes in Real Time

Brian Anthony Hernandez — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:35:14 PST

I Can Has Cheezburger plans to turn the 54th Grammy Awards into a laughing matter by giving viewers an outlet to write funny captions for red carpet and ceremony photos.

The “Live LOLing” event starts Sunday at 4 p.m. PT when Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi site, Twitter profile and Facebook page will begin publishing Grammy images with humorous captions — in lolcat meme format.

People can click “Recaption This” to plop their own witty text on the photos. Participants can then share their creations on their social networks.

Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh told Mashable that she anticipates viewers to provide humorous perspectives regarding celebrities’ fashion choices, performances and speeches, as well as their general reactions to winners and losers.

SEE ALSO: 2012 Grammys Embrace Digital, Mobile and Social Media

“Our community wants more timely content and this is a great way for them to showcase and share their sense of humor on the awards as well as interact rather than just watch the show,” says Huh, who thinks Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry will be popular choices to recaption. “They always wear a showstopping fashion piece that everyone loves to talk about.”

I Can Has Cheezburger celebrated its fifth anniversary in January, just a week before all Cheezburger sites went black Jan. 18 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act.

SEE ALSO: ‘The Day The LOLcats Died’ Song Clobbers SOPA Supporters [VIDEO]

Cheezburger has spawned or acquired more than 50 sister sites such as FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase and The Daily What since 2007.

More About: celebrities, Entertainment, grammy awards, grammys, i can has cheezburger, memes, Music

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Instagram Co-Founder’s Girlfriend Launches Lovestagram for Valentine’s Day

Zoe Fox — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:52:46 PST

Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is about to receive one of the Internet’s most thoughtful Valentine’s Day ecards from his girlfriend Kaitlyn Trigger.

Trigger, who has been dating Krieger since before he launched the hugely popular iOS app, is launching Lovestagram, an interactive Valentine’s card maker that uses the Instagram API, as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Lovestagram creates a slideshow of all Instagram photos shared between you and your special someone, through mutual username tags, photos shot in the same location within an hour or comments exchanged. All you do is sign in through your Instagram account and enter the username of your significant other. Two of the frames place your photos in a still frame you can click through and one places all photos in one frame.

The app works with anyone, no matter your relationship status, though at least for now, all of the frames are love-themed. Trigger says she may expand Lovestagram to create holiday, birthday or anniversary cards in the future.

“It basically lets you look through your relationship in photos,” Trigger told Mashable.

To prepare the ecard maker, Trigger began studying code in Fall 2011. While she wanted to keep her project hidden from Krieger, she realized asking her coding-pro boyfriend to help her with bugs was much easier than solving them herself. Over the past few months, she taught herself Python, Django, Jinja, HTML, CSS, jQuery and Photoshop.

“Mike was really delighted when he realized I was learning code and I had to fend him off a little,” Trigger says. “I really did want to build this myself.”

Though Krieger knows his girlfriend has a big project in the works, he supposedly has no idea exactly what the site is and when it will launch.

Instagram has become something of a cult app, with spin-off products such as iPhone cases and
canvas wall hangings, and a London art gallery even showcased an exhibit of photos manipulated through the app.

Have you heard of any other tech-themed Valentine’s plans this year? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: Geeky Valentine’s Day Cards

1. You Are My Double Rainbow!

What does this mean? It means you can send your sweetie a magnificent meme.

Cost: $3.75

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: instagram, lovestagram, trending, valentine's day

Who's Ready for the (Heaven Forbid) Social Networking Patent Wars?

Liz Gannes — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:00:19 PST

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Tech companies have recently ratcheted up their offensive use of intellectual property, especially in the mobile space — but not so much in social networking.

Just in case patent wars happen to be contagious, it seems worth evaluating which social networking players are best-equipped.

I wrote on Wednesday about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is hopeful that Google may pursue some of the patents and patent applications he filed on behalf of a company he started that Google later acquired.

Also on Wednesday, on the occasion of Facebook filing to go public, two patent researchers from Envision IP posted a good summary of the distribution of social networking patents among tech companies.

Here’s a breakdown:

Facebook: Facebook told prospective investors that it has “56 issued patents and 503 filed patent applications in the United States and 33 corresponding patents and 149 filed patent applications in foreign countries relating to social networking, web technologies and infrastructure, and related technologies.”

(Here’s a list of some of the granted patents, direct from the USPTO.)

This Facebook news feed patent lists Mark Zuckerberg as the first inventor.

Facebook’s patents cover inventions created at the company, like its news feed and some privacy features, as well as some additional intellectual property it acquired.

The biggest patent acquisition deal Facebook has done was with MOL Global, for the Friendster patent portfolio of seven patents and 11 patent applications in May 2010. That cost $40 million — something insiders considered a steal, given the risk of the patents falling into someone else’s hands.

The Friendster patents cover topics like making connections on a social network, friend-of-a-friend connections through a social graph, and social media sharing.

At Facebook’s most recent internal valuation, the stock alone spent on the Friendster patent deal is now worth more than $100 million.

(Personal side note: The Friendster patents are something I’ve now written about for years. I broke the news, for Red Herring, on Friendster being awarded a patent on social networking in 2006, then reported on Facebook acquiring them at GigaOM.)

Google: Though Google hasn’t been a major social networking provider for all that long, it has 25 U.S. patents and 40 pending U.S. patent applications on the topic, by Envision IP’s count.

Google has aggressively hunted intellectual property about social networking. As I referenced earlier, it got a patent portfolio through its acquisition of the Dealmap (previously Fatdoor). That includes patents and patent applications on things like regions of influence within users of a network.

Image from the core Dodgeball patent

Last year, Google also acquired some patents from the shut-down social search engine Wowd, including one on user-driven ranking of Web pages. In an interesting twist that resulted from a three-way split of Wowd’s assets, Google currently licenses those patents to Facebook. Backstory here.

Back in 2005, Google also bought Dodgeball, the mobile social application created by Dennis Crowley, which predated Foursquare. And it turns out that because of Dodgeball, Google is assigned what looks to be a broadly worded patent on “location-based software for mobile devices” that describes messaging between two users who are in close physical proximity to each other.

The Six Degrees patent: Back in 2003, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus paid $700,000 in an auction for a seminal patent from the failed social network Six Degrees, in part to keep it away from Friendster’s control. Hoffman recently told me that he and Pincus bought the patent as individuals, and then assigned it to their companies, LinkedIn and Tribe.net.

Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM: Envision IP notes that Apple has 35 U.S. patents and 76 U.S. patent applications that seem to be about social networking and collaboration, many of them focused on mobile. Yahoo has an armory of patents on all sorts of general Web technologies, while Microsoft and IBM have about 80 patents on file sharing, messaging and infrastructure that could be used for social networks.

LinkedIn and Twitter: LinkedIn has one patent, on evaluating user reputations within a social network. Twitter doesn’t seem to have applied for a single patent (at least, not prior to 18 months ago, since that’s the period after which patent applications are published).

What are the other pockets of social networking intellectual property out there, at other companies and around the world? I’m sure I’ve missed some, so please add to this list in the comments.

Typical readers of top tech blogs revealed!

Martin Bryant — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:02:44 PST

Ben Lang of Wibiya and Sivan Cohen of Conduit have come up with this graphic that neatly sums up the readerships of some of the world’s most popular tech blogs.

We think they’ve pretty much nailed most of these, although Pando Daily’s ‘Techie tree huggers’ raised an eyebrow. As a The Next Web reader, congratulations – you’re a ‘true Web lover’.

If you enjoyed this, try Tech tabloids you are lucky don’t exist.

Sprint adds Baltimore and Kansas City to mid-2012 4G LTE launch

Andrew Webster — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:16:48 PST

As part of Sprint's move towards 4G LTE and away from WiMAX the company has added two new cities to its mid-2012 LTE launch: Baltimore and Kansas City will be joining Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, which were announced earlier this year. No official date has been set for when the service will roll out, aside from a vague middle of 2012 window, and in addition to the 4G service, the six cities will also receive "enhanced" 3G service. Sprint's LTE network is expected to support more than 15 devices in 2012, including the Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper. The full rollout of the network is due in 2013, when Sprint plans to cover 250 million Americans with the LTE service, more than double the 120 million currently covered by WiMAX.

iPhone, Meet Laser Blaster. Is This 2012′s Hottest Toy?

Chris Taylor — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:17:08 PST

iPhones aren’t cool. You know what’s cool? Shooting your friends with your iPhone, mounted into a laser blaster.

A couple of phone-based friend-blasting systems have crossed our radar this week — one for iPhone, one for any smartphone.

First came news that Hasbro is updating Lazer Tag (remember that?) for the app-obsessed 21st century. Its 2012 edition guns, hitting toy store shelves this August for $40 per blaster, include a slot for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Using a free Lazer Tag app and the phone’s built-in camera, the set-up will keep track of who shot whom and how much energy you have left. No need to wear those bulky chest targets! Here’s what the weapons will look like:

Not bad, but kind of cheap and plastic-looking. That trigger slot looks a little unwieldy, designed more for coins than fingers. And if you own anything other than an iPhone, you’re out of luck.

Not so with the AppTag (see above at top), a similar weapon that hit Kickstarter this week from Australian inventor (and army veteran) Jon Atherton. Entirely open source, the AppTag will not only work with any smartphone — it’ll slot on top of any toy gun.

Atherton plans to deliver the AppTag in June, at a bargain-basement price of $25 per unit. He’s also offering an SDK for developers, and promises the device will ship with at least a couple of augmented reality games.

So which device will win in the marketplace? No contest, Atherton tells Mashable. “The Hasbro toy is pretty interesting in a committee designed kinda way,” he says. “But they didn’t think of a lot of things” — such as the fact that you have to take your phone out of its case to put it in the Lazer Tag gun.

AppTag’s secret sauce: it communicates with your smartphone via high frequency sound, rather than wires, Wifi or Bluetooth. (It’s unclear how the Lazer Tag guns will connect to the iPhone). You’ll still be able to talk to buddies on your team while shooting your other buddies.

Check out Atherton’s endearingly nervous pitch for Kickstarter funds in the video below. (He’s asking for $30,000; the project has gained $3,000 in a matter of days). And let us know in the comments: does this look like fun?

More About: Augmented Reality, games, iphone, kickstarter

Pinterest does disclose it modifies links, and we shouldn’t blame it for making money

Matthew Panzarino — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:17:49 PST

Yesterday, even as news of Path’s unfortunate error in uploading users’ contact information wholesale surfaced, there was another hot product being brought under fire. This time it was the hot product collection community Pinterest and its relatively stealthy practice of replacing regular links to products with ‘affiliate links’.

Writer Josh Davis uncovered the practice and ran down the proof of it occurring in a thorough post here. Basically, Pinterest scans the links that lead to products that users submit to its ‘pinning’ service and insert affiliate links wherever possible, allowing them to earn a small amount any time someone follows that link and makes a purchase.

An affiliate link, if you’re not already aware, is a string of characters that routes your click through an advertising server, giving the hosting site a bit of a commission on any purchase. It’s done in cooperation with the site that sells the product and it’s very common. Nearly every iTunes link you follow from a blog to purchase an app from Apple, for instance, has one attached.

It was later revealed, by Mike Butcher at Techcrunch, that the service Pinterest was using was one called Skimlinks. Skimlinks allows sites to monetize links throughout their site automatically by inserting these affiliate partner codes. Then Skimlinks went on the record to state that its relationship with Pinterest ‘isn’t a secret‘.

Earlier today, author Brett Kelley addressed this issue in a nicely succinct post. In the post, he points to Pinterest’s Terms of Use page, on which it, in fact, does disclose that it may modify user’s links (bold is ours):

We may, in our sole discretion, permit Members to post, upload, publish, submit or transmit Member Content. By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use and exploit any such Member Content.

As Kelley points out, this is an extremely common practice for many sites, including just about any that allow you to create ‘wishlists’ of products. It’s how they monetize their business and there’s really no harm done to any user via the practice.

Pinterest could absolutely have made more of an effort to make clear that it was using affiliate linking to generate revenue, and perhaps the terms aren’t clear enough for some, but they are there. In the end, it has taken what may be one of the most ‘victim free’ routes to monetizing its site early.

It also turns out that Pinterest even makes it a policy not to overwrite users’ personal affiliate links if they have them and pin, say, a product from Amazon that earns them a cut should anyone click and make a purchase. Joel Garcia over at GTO Management performed a simple experiment in order to explore this.

Garcia found that if a link was pinned from another site, Pinterest did indeed modify it to its own affiliate link, as it was caught by the automatic Skimlinks system. But if a user pinned an item directly on Pinterest and replaced the link with their own affiliate URL, it stayed.

Sure, it’s not the most convenient thing for affiliate marketers, but making that kind of monetization easy for those independents isn’t Pinterest’s problem. The way we see it, this is just further evidence that Pinterest isn’t out to hurt its users.

When I briefly spoke to Alicia Navarro, CEO of Skimlinks, she said that the ‘out of the box’ functionality of Skimlinks does not overwrite existing affiliate links. This appears to jibe with the way that Pinterest currently operates.

Not only that, but there is something to be said for a startup like Pinterest making an effort to simply make money early on. We see a lot of startups these days and it’s really tough to see so many building a business on the hope of ‘pivoting’ it at some point in the future in order to gin up a way to make money.

Yes, users are good, but money keeps the doors open and all too often an early funding round gives startups a false sense of security. Will Pinterest have success making money this way? I’m not sure. But It’s definitely not a bad start and, aside from not making the way that they’re doing it a bit clearer, Pinterest hasn’t done anything wrong and may actually be doing something very right.

Chrome 17 update adds more pre-loading and security measures

Dieter Bohn — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:49:51 PST

Google has announced a new update for its Chrome desktop browser, adding a couple of new features that should be well-received. The first is expanded pre-loading — Chrome already pre-fetches certain web pages it guesses you're going to click on next in the background so they will render "instantly" when you click a link. Now Chrome is adding that same feature to web pages you're about to visit by dint of typing the URL into the main address / search "omnibox." Google says it will pre-load sites that are autocompleted as you type if "you're very likely to visit" them.

Google also added some expanded security measures to Chrome. It will automatically check downloads against a database of known malware and sketchy source sites to warn you...

On Facebook and Twitter, Few Want Political News [STUDY]

Alex Fitzpatrick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:55:19 PST

Only six percent of Americans are getting their political news from Facebook while a meager two percent do the same on Twitter, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The study, which analyzed how Americans are watching the 2012 presidential race, also found that interest is down from 2008 across mediums. 29 percent of respondents have said they’re following news about the election “very closely,” down from 34 percent the same time last year.

The campaign has lost the interest of many young Americans. In 2008, 31 percent of people aged 18-29 said they were paying close attention to the political showdown. This time around, only 20 percent are dialed in.

Could it be that ambivalence on the part of younger people (who are generally more engaged with social media) is causing the low numbers of engagement with campaign news on services such as Facebook and Twitter?

Possibly, suggests the data.

While 42 percent of people aged 18-29 got campaign news primarily from the Internet in late 2007, only 29 percent are doing the same in early 2012. But their lack of engagement is reflected in all forms of media: cable news, network news, local TV and local newspapers have all seen a downward trend for political coverage and that age bracket.

However, people over 30 are using the Internet as their primary source of campaign news more often in 2012 than in 2007. And the Internet is still the place where young people who are engaged with politics turn for their politics fix, followed closely by cable news. The 18-29 age group also ranked Facebook as the place where they most often learn “something” about the political campaign, even if it’s not their primary source for news.

Did you expect more people to be turning to Facebook and Twitter for political news? Sound off in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Facebook, Politics, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Comedy: How to Be Funny in 140 Characters

Matt Silverman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:37:23 PST

Comedy is king on Twitter. Professional humorists and armchair standups alike have amassed legions of followers that hang on every 140-character quip.

Twitter humor is a brand-builder, a great writing exercise, and if you’re really good, it might even land you a job (but probably not, so settle down).

So, what does it take to get laughs at this 24/7 digital cocktail party? We asked some of the funniest tweeters around for their tips on cracking wise in the one-liner Renaissance.

1. Start by Being Funny in the First Place

Bill Corbett knows a thing or two about landing short quips. He's a writer/performer over at RiffTrax.com, and an alum of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show that invented this stuff.

"First bit of advice: Be a funny person. There may be nothing you can do about this one.

Second bit of advice: Try to understand the short form, and be playful within it. Not everything needs to read like a classic "premise, punchline" joke...But understand that tastes vary wildly. Not everyone will think you're hilarious, and some dicks will make sure to tell you so. Don't worry about it.

Third bit of advice: Really, there are no rules. Ignore my second bit of advice and go back to my first."

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: comedy, features, funny, humor, Social Media, trending, Twitter, writing

Facebook: 60 million users access apps through a mobile device

Jon Russell — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:32:45 PST

Facebook threw out some interesting numbers during a fireside chat with Inside Facebook. Speaking to the blog.the world’s most popular social networks claimed that 60 million of its users are engaging with Facebook apps through their mobile phone.

Director of Product Management Carl Sjogreen clarified that in saying mobile apps, he referred to users that their accessed apps via the mobile web, or used mobile applications which integrate with Facebook.

Of average, each of these users will interact with an app times five per month, which is reasonable but clearly a marker for Facebook to build on.

With Facebook figure’s reporting that it sees 425 million users access the site via mobile, its apps have a 14 percent usage rate amongst its mobile user base, which explains why the company is making more of a play to encourage users on mobile to use apps.

As a ratio against Facebook’s overall 850 million user base, its mobile apps hit just over 7 percent, and it is clearly focused on growing the mobile side of its business. The platform has the potential to generate far greater levels of activity and revenue if more users can be brought on board, indeed Facebook publicly reveals mobile users are twice as active as those on PCs.

While in Western markets, Facebook is likely converting decent numbers of users to mobile, where they are likely to be more active on the service, its users in emerging markets will take longer. Smartphone penetration is lower there however things are beginning to change. albeit at a slower rate that in the West, thanks to lower priced devices.

Inside Facebook also reports that on the subject of development, Sjogreen reveals that Facebook ”doesn’t really care whether developers build for mobile web or native apps” insisting that reaching users is more important that platform. He does, however, believe that web apps have their benefits as HTML-5 based apps can be used across a wide-range of platforms and services, though they do compromise on performance somewhat.

Google closes in on Google Drive launch, its long awaited Dropbox competitor

Matt Brian — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:37:06 PST

Google is reportedly close to launching its long awaited cloud storage service Drive, delivering a personal file-synchronisation platform that will allow users to store and copy files between computers and mobile devices.

The Wall Street Journal cites sources familiar with the matter, which state that Drive will facilitate the storing of photos, documents and videos on Google’s servers, allowing them to instantly share them with other people.

Google Drive is tipped to launch in the ‘coming weeks or months’ and is expected to be free for most users and businesses. As with Dropbox, Google is likely to introduce a paid storage option for users that wish to store large amounts of files.

Google already allows users to upgrade their Gmail and Picasa storage, so it would likely incorporate the same structure into its new Drive service. Prices start at $5 for 20GB, so it would be inexpensive for users if the search giant was to adhere to the same strategy.

In November, we reported that Google was starting to introduce references to its cloud storage service inside Google Docs, which could be unlocked to enable a “Download Google Drive” option within the website itself.

The option looked to only be available to users with the correct privileges, suggesting it could be an option for Google employees, but highlighted an option that could possibly initiate the download of an application that would sync their entire Google Docs archive to their new Google Drive account or vice versa – when it launched.

Google is tipped to launch mobile applications and a desktop app, keeping files synchronised between devices. Whether iOS and Windows Phone users will be able to utilise the service on their smartphones and tablets remains to be seen, for Google to achieve mass-penetration, it almost certainly has to do so.

Google is planning its first ever retail store

Martin Bryant — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:27:38 PST

Google is considering opening a retail store in Dublin, a planning application noted by Bloomberg reveals.

The store, located on its campus in the Irish capital, would be open to the public and sell unspecified “Google merchandise,” the application says.

This would be Google’s first public retail store. Last year it opened a presence in a London branch of Currys and PC World, with a branded section of the store dedicated to Chromebooks. Google sells a wider array of merchandise online via the Google Store, and a Google Doodle store powered by Zazzle.

It’s unknown exactly what the Dublin store will sell, and indeed it may not even open at all – a Google spokesperson told Bloomberg “While we do have the option to open retail space, we are examining all potential uses… No final decision has been taken.”

If it does come to fruition, the Dublin store, at Google’s largest base outside its Mountain View HQ, would take up 123 square meters (1,323 square feet) of space, with a mezzanine floor.

Bricks-and-mortar stores are a growing trend among tech companies, it seems. eBay opened a pop-up shop in London before Christmas, and it’s rumoured that Amazon may be experimenting with a physical retail presence in Seattle. Meanwhile, Microsoft has a growing chain of stores in the US.

Apple to Announce iPad 3 First Week in March

John Paczkowski — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:30:30 PST

Apple’s not holding an event in February — strange, unusual or otherwise. But it is holding one in March — to launch its next iPad.

Sources say the company has chosen the first week in March to debut the successor to the iPad 2, and will do so at one of its trademark special events. The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.

No word yet on a street date for the iPad 3 (assuming that’s what it’s called), though my guess is retail availability will follow roughly the same schedule as that of the iPad 2: Available for purchase a week or so after the event.

As for the next-generation iPad itself, sources say it will be pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release: A device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but running a much faster chip, sporting an improved graphics processing unit, and featuring a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.

If 2011 was the year of the iPad 2, will 2012 be the year of the iPad 3? Said a source familiar with the device: “What do you think?”

An Apple spokeswoman declined comment on the timing of the event, saying the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.

Techmeme Aims For Community Aggregation With A Big New Tech Event Calendar

Eric Eldon — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:44:45 PST

As part of news aggregator Techmeme‘s big redesign a couple weeks ago, it moved its flow of top stories to the left to make room for… white space. But founder Gabe Rivera promised at the time that there’d be stuff coming to fill it, and now we know what — an events calendar for the tech world.

It’s a play to solidify the site’s position as the watercooler for anyone in tech, especially in Silicon Valley. In a post on the addition today, he says that while anyone can submit an event (sort of like its job board), there’s a specific thing that will earn a place in the calendar: “we’ll include events that are expected to produce the kind of news that appears on Techmeme” (his bolding, not mine).

There are already a variety of calendars out there for tech-related stuff. Searching Meetup in the Bay Area will yield a lot of quality casual tech gatherings for instance. But there’s no one dominant tech calendar, filtered for interestingness… like there’s no dominant news aggregator for tech news besides Techmeme. So, the addition is a logical fit to help make Techmeme even more relevant to its readers.

More details on listing criteria, from his post:

For example, events involving major announcements or product launches, or conferences including candid interviews with a major industry figures. As such, we will also include events like earnings announcements (of the more bellwether variety), scheduled project launches, and other kinds of virtual events that one cannot attend in body, but only in browser.

Basic listings are free, but if accepted, event organizers can pay for yellow bolding and a “Register Now” button that links to their event site.

We’ll see what the team fills the rest of the white space with.

This photo suggests that the iPad 3 will come with a larger battery

Drew Olanoff — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:41:13 PST

During the time in between Apple product releases, there is no shortage of rumors and speculation about future ones. Today, according to the Repair Labs Blog, a revealing photo of the iPad 3′s rear inner shell hints that there might be some tweaks made to the current version of the iPad.

Most notably, it appears that that the iPad 3 may sport a larger battery for longer life, according to this photo from the blog’s sources in China and its description below:

A. You can see here that the mounts for the logic board are very different, which means the logic board shape will be different allowing for . . . .

B. More battery. The width of where the logic board sits on the iPad 2 appears much larger than that of the iPad 3. We have long heard that the iPad 3 was going to provide longer battery life, and this back housing seems to support that.

C. The camera is different. It is hard to make a judgment just by looking at the casing, but what we can expect is a different camera on the iPad 3 than what we had on the 2.

D. LCD will be different than what we have had before. Whether or not it will be the super screen we have seen reported will have to wait. But the different mounting does mean that the LCD has been redesigned at the very least.

This all appears to be on the up-and-up with other reports that we’ve heard about the iPad 3 having a retina display, thus needing more battery juice. As we move closer to an official announcement of the iPad 3, expect a huge number of rumors and speculation to start swirling about other features that may or may not come to fruition.