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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

What’s new on the app stores on Monday 6 February 2012

A selection of 13 apps for you today:

Greggs

Ah, those moments when you MUST have a piping-hot sausage roll or three, but don’t know where to go. The official iPhone app for UK bakery chain Greggs can help, with its GPS-enabled Shop Finder feature. It also promotes discounts, includes the complete menu, and social sharing features.
iPhone

Time Ducks

Frogger meets Braid meets slot machines. Intrigued? Danish developer Tough Guy Studios has released this lovingly-created line-drawing game that involves getting animals across the road, while rewinding and fast-forwarding time at will.
iPhone / iPad

Parent Bingo

Parenting can be a stressful experience. iPhone app Parent Bingo aims to help by boosting “a parent’s first line of defence – their sense of humour”. The idea: mark off parental experiences on a digital bingo card, and share with friends.
iPhone

Seesmic Ping

Social startup Seesmic’s latest Android app wants to help people schedule their posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, choosing when and where status updates should be made available.
Android

FourFourTwo Gallery

Magazine publisher Haymarket has a new appy spin-off from FourFourTwo magazine. This Gallery app for iPad offers football photography, from action shots to the sillier side of the game – as well as more than 200 covers from the mag itself.
iPad

Infected

Out on iOS since December 2011, Glu’s freemium action game Infected is now on Android. It sees you roaming the streets of New York killing zombies. Well, it’s more the zombies who are roaming, given that this is a tower defence-style game.
Android

iDaTank

After for a quirky yet lovely-looking Japanese robo-exploration game? Look no further than iDataTank, which has enough character to perhaps become a breakout indie hit on Android.
Android

Mr Legs

It must be the week for intriguing indie Android games. Mr Legs is the work of a new studio called James Games, and sees its long-legged hero plucking cherries on the streets of Londonium, with a characterful visual style.
Android

Rogue Racing

Another freemium game from Glu, but this time iOS-only – for now at least. Rogue Racing is a Need For Speed-style street-racing game, but reviewers on the App Store are already complaining about the gameplay and in-app purchases implementation.
iPhone / iPad

Disney Second Screen: Lady And the Tramp Edition

It’s US-only, but Disney’s latets second-screen iPad app is designed to be used during or after watching Lady and the Tramp, accessing galleries, flipbooks and playing challenges.
iPad

Pet Shop Story: Valentine’s Day

The new fashion for iOS freemium social games seems to be launching calendar-focused spin-offs. Lots had Christmas editions, but now TeamLava’s Pet Shop Story has got in first with a Valentine’s Day version. A pet shop with a “Kitty Kissing Booth”? Sounds illegal.
iPhone / iPad

My Country: Sports Edition

There’s also the genre-based spin-off, as seen in this new Android game from Cooper Media: a sporty offshoot from its My Country freemium game. The idea: build the perfect sports village, with tennis courts, stadia and swimming pools. Bonuses feed back into the main game too.
Android

ARWedding Japan

And finally, (virtual) hats off to the Japanese couple who have released an augmented reality Android app just for guests coming to their wedding reception: “Just hold the camera up to the QR code to see your gift!”
Android

What’s new on the app stores on Monday 6 February 2012

A selection of 13 apps for you today:

Greggs

Ah, those moments when you MUST have a piping-hot sausage roll or three, but don’t know where to go. The official iPhone app for UK bakery chain Greggs can help, with its GPS-enabled Shop Finder feature. It also promotes discounts, includes the complete menu, and social sharing features.
iPhone

Time Ducks

Frogger meets Braid meets slot machines. Intrigued? Danish developer Tough Guy Studios has released this lovingly-created line-drawing game that involves getting animals across the road, while rewinding and fast-forwarding time at will.
iPhone / iPad

Parent Bingo

Parenting can be a stressful experience. iPhone app Parent Bingo aims to help by boosting “a parent’s first line of defence – their sense of humour”. The idea: mark off parental experiences on a digital bingo card, and share with friends.
iPhone

Seesmic Ping

Social startup Seesmic’s latest Android app wants to help people schedule their posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, choosing when and where status updates should be made available.
Android

FourFourTwo Gallery

Magazine publisher Haymarket has a new appy spin-off from FourFourTwo magazine. This Gallery app for iPad offers football photography, from action shots to the sillier side of the game – as well as more than 200 covers from the mag itself.
iPad

Infected

Out on iOS since December 2011, Glu’s freemium action game Infected is now on Android. It sees you roaming the streets of New York killing zombies. Well, it’s more the zombies who are roaming, given that this is a tower defence-style game.
Android

iDaTank

After for a quirky yet lovely-looking Japanese robo-exploration game? Look no further than iDataTank, which has enough character to perhaps become a breakout indie hit on Android.
Android

Mr Legs

It must be the week for intriguing indie Android games. Mr Legs is the work of a new studio called James Games, and sees its long-legged hero plucking cherries on the streets of Londonium, with a characterful visual style.
Android

Rogue Racing

Another freemium game from Glu, but this time iOS-only – for now at least. Rogue Racing is a Need For Speed-style street-racing game, but reviewers on the App Store are already complaining about the gameplay and in-app purchases implementation.
iPhone / iPad

Disney Second Screen: Lady And the Tramp Edition

It’s US-only, but Disney’s latets second-screen iPad app is designed to be used during or after watching Lady and the Tramp, accessing galleries, flipbooks and playing challenges.
iPad

Pet Shop Story: Valentine’s Day

The new fashion for iOS freemium social games seems to be launching calendar-focused spin-offs. Lots had Christmas editions, but now TeamLava’s Pet Shop Story has got in first with a Valentine’s Day version. A pet shop with a “Kitty Kissing Booth”? Sounds illegal.
iPhone / iPad

My Country: Sports Edition

There’s also the genre-based spin-off, as seen in this new Android game from Cooper Media: a sporty offshoot from its My Country freemium game. The idea: build the perfect sports village, with tennis courts, stadia and swimming pools. Bonuses feed back into the main game too.
Android

ARWedding Japan

And finally, (virtual) hats off to the Japanese couple who have released an augmented reality Android app just for guests coming to their wedding reception: “Just hold the camera up to the QR code to see your gift!”
Android

iPhone, Distinctive Developments, 69p

Perpetual motion games have proved a big hit on mobiles – thriving on bursts of intensely pressured gameplay in the object-hurtles-towards-dangerous-obstacle mould, with only the player’s hand-eye co-ordination to prolong the agony. My Army (iPhone, Distinctive Developments, 69p) pushes this further. With a top-down perspective reminiscent of Cannon Fodder, a squadron of four soldiers heads into enemy territory.

To start, you tilt the iPhone to manoeuvre around obstacles, barbed wire and mines, before hails of gunfire are added, then rockets and bombs that must be swept from the screen. Returning fire is vital for buying time – but ammo is limited and crates must be collected to replenish supplies. Dead soldiers can be replaced with rescued PoWs but once all the men are down it’s game over.

Repeated attempts to top that high score inevitably follow, along with much tilting, swiping, gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair – hallmarks of the just-one-more-go greats.

World’s top tech firm brought to book by minor monologuist over working conditions in factories that make its gadgets

These days Mike Daisey is run off his feet. “I don’t even have time to listen to my voicemail now. That’s a phenomenon I have not experienced before,” he told the Observer with an amazed laugh. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised. In the past fortnight, Daisey has gone from being a gifted but obscure solo act in the US theatre to the public face of a backlash against one of the iconic corporations of the 21st century.

Daisey’s latest work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, has triggered off a spasm of soul-searching about the sometimes appalling labour conditions in China under which many of America’s most cherished products are made. Specifically, the shiny, sleek iPhones, iPods and iPads produced by Apple.

The Agony and the Ecstasy was devised after exhaustive research talking to exploited and abused workers in China, for almost 18 months. Daisey played to small but appreciative crowds across the US, winning critical praise but stirring little trouble, not even with the target of his ire: Apple itself.

But everything changed in January when a discussion and partial performance of Daisey’s monologue appeared on the National Public Radio show This American Life. It rapidly became the most downloaded episode of the show’s history and an online petition calling for Apple to reform its practices began. Within 48 hours it attracted 140,000 names. Then the New York Times ran an exhaustive investigation of Apple’s supplier network in China that revealed industrial accidents, brutal working conditions and child labour. Daisey had briefed the newspaper’s reporters and they had watched his show last year. Suddenly, Apple’s Chinese supplier network was huge news.

That has turned him into an unlikely nemesis, sending tremors of fear through one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. It is an amazing shift. After all, for 15 years the New York-based Daisey has crafted his art as a gifted monologuist, winning praise but little mass appeal on a variety of topics from his first job at Amazon to his views on Oprah Winfrey, or recounting a trip to the South Pacific.

But now, arriving apologetically late and harried in a trendy Brooklyn restaurant near his home in New York, Daisey is a man in intense demand. He has appearances lined up on CNN and other TV shows. On his blog he has been updating the story regularly and fending off criticism from Apple’s defenders, including comedian Stephen Fry and Forbes columnist Tim Worstall.

Daisey is delighted but exhausted, having been up until 5am composing a response to a public attack from Worstall. “I am tired but I am encouraged to see traction. The only way you can fight for a thing like this is when you know the truth is on your side,” he told the Observer.

Daisey’s sudden catapult on to the world stage as the public face of criticism against Apple is an astonishing development, especially for such a rarely practised art as the theatrical monologue. It has also likely made his Steve Jobs piece one of the most remarkable performances of recent years, not least because of its leap from the stage to real world activism. “It’s the first time maybe in a generation that the American theatre has affected change.”

The play’s premise is simple enough. It blends Daisey’s own backstory as a nerdy geek who loved – and continues to love – Apple products, with the story of how Jobs ran the company with a mix of tyranny and genius before he died last year. But then it heads into dark territory as Daisey recounts how he became obsessed with photographs that emerged from inside the giant Foxconn factory in which many Apple products are made.

His fascination with how his beloved gadgets were built ends up with a subversive trip to southern China and interviews with ordinary workers who describe the physically and mentally crippling conditions in which many toil. On the trip Daisey was stunned that he, as a playwright, was the one digging up the truth. “I wanted journalists to tell the story. I am a monologuist and it’s not the same thing. But I had to act as a journalist,” he said.

Daisey is scathing about many of the journalists who cover Apple. He claimed they were often cowed by the firm, given strictly controlled access to the latest product launches but subject to intimidation over writing about anything that might hurt Apple’s public image. He recites the story of one tech journalist who agreed to appear on a panel with him, only to be contacted by Apple and warned off doing so. “Apple has built an incredible institution of secrecy and people understand that when Apple threaten them they mean it. Everyone knows that,” Daisey said.

As a performer, though, Daisey is immune. Yet he confesses he still has a complex emotional relationship with the company. He still uses an iPhone and does not tell people to boycott the company, just spread the word about Chinese labour practices in the hope that they change. When people email him to ask what phone they should buy – and they do in large numbers – he tells them to make an “ethical” choice they are comfortable with. He himself no longer upgrades his devices and is considering buying secondhand in the future.

Apple for its part says many of the stories emerging from China are not true and that it already is acting to monitor its suppliers’ behaviour and bring in greater transparency. Other defenders of the firm point out that many other electrical goods firms are equally as culpable as Apple, if not more so.

For Daisey, perhaps because he loved Apple’s caring and cool public image so much, that is not good enough. “It is like watching a friend lose his way. It is hard to imagine the Apple of a generation ago making this ham-fisted error.” He believes the firm could have acted years earlier to improve its supplier network in China and would have reaped a PR bonanza, rather than the current global whirlwind of bad publicity.

“Now all they have to do is clean up the mess, but if they had got ahead of it they could have looked fantastic,” he said.

Daisey himself is not stopping his charge. His monologue is still on stage and will remain so for at least the rest of the year. He may take it to bigger venues for one-off shows, aiming at 2,000-3,000-seat venues so the ticket prices can be driven down. He is also seeking to turn the monologue into a film. As a final way of spreading the word, he is soon to release a transcript of it and allow anyone in the world to adapt his show or put it on in as their own live performance. “People can tell this story to other people. This is exactly how the environmental movement really took hold. People realised these values mattered and they began to tell the story from person to person and that’s what caused change,” he said.

Though Daisey has other ideas for future monologues he knows the success of the Jobs show and the issue of Chinese labour practices that it illustrates is going to dominate his life for the foreseeable future. As he got up to leave the restaurant he left behind a half-eaten sandwich. He was headed to a car that would whisk him to a TV studio for another interview. “It’s like that feeling you get when you climb a mountain and you get to the top and it turns out you are in the Alps, and there’s a whole series of mountains ahead of you. Then you sharpen your stick and keep walking,” he said.

We will be taking a good look at a product dubbed as the “fastest, most versatile I/O ever” in this Apple Thunderbolt Display review. Via a compact port, the Apple Thunderbolt device can be used to turn the Mac mini, MacBook air, iMac, and MacBook Pro into a desktop workstation with one cable for convenience.

Users can enjoy incredibly fast transfer of data between the computer and high performance devices by using the Apple Thunderbolt devices. There are two Gbps throughput channels. Comparatively, it is significantly faster than a USB 2.0. In fact, it is up to 20 times faster. As a result, this also means that the FireWire 800 is no match for the Thunderbolt in terms of speed, being approximately 12 times faster.

Users will be able to connect up to six different devices to the Thunderbolt, through one port. The Apple Thunderbolt Display provides users with an amount of power and flexibility that until now, has been unheard of and simply not available to the public.

The company involved with the creation of the Apple Thunderbolt Display was Intel. The In an attempt to create an input/output technology that exceeds anything available in the market, Intel was going to do that through the Thunderbolt. In addition to creating an extremely fast I/O, another goal was to have it virtually plugged into anything. Because of this goal, Apple and Intel decided to work together toward this goal. The project ended with a success, and the company’s Mac computers now enjoy this device.

This project was not Intel’s or Apple’s first venture into the data transfer technology. The invention of the PCI Express and USB by Intel were partially credited while Apple was acknowledged for the FireWire. Using this knowledge, the companies collaborated to come up with the fastest, most impressive I/O technology to hit the market.
Two familiar and effective technologies, the DisplayPort and PCI Express, were combined for the first time via the Thunderbolt. Because of this combination, this became the first I/O device to be incredibly fast and complex while supporting high resolution displays.

The Apple Thunderbolt Display is a great device overall. The device was created through a combination of the very best and most advanced technologies from some of the industry’s most successful companies.

Because it is an incredible device, the Apple Thunderbolt Display has a lot of people talking about it. For people who need the best data transfer speed and high quality resolution, the device is amongst the most wanted devices. Hopefully, this Apple Thunderbolt Display review has been helpful and will aid individuals in deciding whether or not the Apple Thunderbolt Display device is right for them.

Plants vs. Zombie and Angry Ninja Birds removed, but other misleading apps remain

Played Plants vs. Zombie yet? It’s available for iPhone and iPad for £1.99 – a snip, given its promise of “proffessional characters and levels design. Fun and colorful animation. Full retina display support. Very intuitive and addictive game with simple touch control. Many bonuses and extra points!”

It’s strange to see a company as experienced as PopCap Games mis-spelling the word professional in an App Store listing, though. And hang on, isn’t it Plants vs. Zombies? What happened to the rest of the undead?

As you may have guessed, this game has nothing to do with PopCap. Plants vs. Zombie is the work of a developer called Anton Sinelnikov.

He’s also the man behind an array of other familiar-sounding iOS games, including Angry Ninja Birds, Temple Jump, Numbers With Friends, Tiny Birds and Zombie Air Highway. Not to mention non-game apps with alluring titles like Lovely Girls, Sexual Offenders HD, The Horse Woman (“Warning: Adults 21_ ONLY!”) and Victorian Sexy.

It’s the games that are causing a stir among mobile developers though, especially those whose games Sinelnikov’s titles and icons have been clearly inspired by.

He’s not the only iOS developer playing this game. Another firm, Top Best Adult Entertainment, boasts a portfolio including MoonCRAFT, Little Pet Pony, Bens 10 BattleTime and Talking Bunny Bugs.

Links to both these developers’ portfolios have been doing the rounds among iOS developers in recent days, often accompanied by suggestions that Apple should be doing more to stop them.

There is evidence that the company is. Imangi Studios founder Keith Shepherd – it makes Temple Run, which is the game that seemingly inspired Temple Jump – has tweeted that “Apple has pulled ‘Plants vs Zombie’, ‘Angry Ninja Birds’, and ‘Zombie Air Highway’ from the same seller but not ‘Temple Jump’ yet.”

In earlier tweets, Shepherd had pointed to reviews of the latter indicating that some people have bought it expecting Temple Run – currently one of the most popular and lucrative games on iOS – and posted one-star reviews on the App Store to express their disgust.

The existence of these kinds of apps is provoking an important debate about how Apple moderates its App Store, and by extension its rivals with their stores too.

Apple may have the reputation of being pretty hands-on with its approval process, but it has tended to leave IP infringement to be policed by developers. They make a complaint, and Apple removes the infringing apps from its store if that complaint is upheld.

The process has seen Atari criticised in recent months for forcing the removal of games like Vector Tanks, which it sees as too similar to its classic title Battlezone. Yet this is the same process that Imangi and other developers will need to use to petition for the removal of so-called “scam-apps”.

There are safeguards built into the App Store – chief among them its rating system. Temple Jump’s average rating here in the UK is 1.5 stars from 18 ratings, while Temple Run’s is five stars from more than 86,000 ratings. It doesn’t seem that hard to spot which is the kosher title.

Should Apple be playing copyright cop before apps are released onto its store? It’s a can of worms, especially when such moderation would pre-empt any legal process.

Far better to ensure that its takedown process is fair and speedy: although judging by our interview with P2 Games in December 2011 about its struggles with apps ripping off brands like Peppa Pig, there is still work to do on this front.

Plagiarism is a hot topic in the iOS development community at the moment, with a separate debate around Zynga’s new game Dream Heights, and its perceived similarities to independent developer NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower.

Rather than sue or demand a takedown in that case, NimbleBit chose to call Zynga out on Twitter with some side-by-side screenshots, sparking a return volley from Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus, who compared Tiny Tower to older (non-mobile) game SimTower.

That debate is ongoing, as is a lawsuit between Spry Fox and 6waves Lolapps over similarities between the former’s Triple Town and the latter’s Yeti Town.

Here’s why apps like Temple Jump, Angry Ninja Birds and the rest are different, though. For developers, the Zynga/NimbleBit row is about harm that may be caused to the smaller developer, if it loses players (or potential players) to Zynga’s new game. The players will likely have a good experience whichever one they play.

In the case of Temple Jump, it’s not just Temple Run developer Imangi that is losing business. Apple’s customers are being harmed if they pay for an app that isn’t what they think it is from developers like Top Best Adult Entertainment or Anton Sinelnikov.

If, as Shepherd tweeted, these apps are disappearing from the App Store, that is likely to be the main reason: harm to consumers, rather than to developers.

With so much money swashing around the iOS ecosystem though – $700m paid out to developers in the final quarter of 2011 alone – Apple will need to keep its big red takedown button to hand for the forseeable future.

Betting exchange may weave mobile-specific social and location features into its apps in the future

Betfair has relaunched its iPad app in response to what it says is strong demand from its customers for more tablet-focused features and interface.

The app, which is now live in Apple’s App Store, makes it faster for customers to place bets on currently-popular sporting events, while also drilling down into other sports, and quickly depositing and withdrawing funds from their accounts.

The update comes after a strong year of mobile growth for the betting exchange. In its last set of interim financial results, covering the six months to 31 October 2011, Betfair said that more than £800m was traded through its mobile service, up 96% year-on-year.

That resulted in £9.1m of revenues for Betfair itself – 7.3% of its overall exchange revenue. The company now has more than 160,000 active mobile users, who placed 16.2m bets in that six-month period from within its apps and mobile site.

Betfair now has a 60-person team working specifically on mobile, up from 5-10 two years ago according to head of product Anil Bhagchandani. The investment appears to be paying off.

“Not only are people moving over from website to mobile, but there is incremental value from that,” he says. “Customers who were purely website and who then start using mobile almost always stay longer, bet more and have a higher ARPU.”

Betfair’s mobile ambitions started with an app for J2ME handsets, but it has since launched apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, as well as the HTML5 site.

“For most of the last year, we were trying to get apps across each of the platforms roughly as functional as each other and the website,” says director of technology Phil Dixon.

“”We may now take one or two of the platforms and begin to experiment and explore. iPad might explore different usage paradigms, for example, and on Android we may have a bit more flexibility to try different navigation.”

The new iPad app is a good example, developed in response to detailed feedback from Betfair’s tablet-owning customers – Apps Blog sat behind the one-way glass at the company’s focus-testing room in its London headquarters to watch one “VIP” user say in no uncertain terms what was lacking in its previous tablet apps, and how he’d like to use the updated version.

Dixon says Betfair is firm about not taking sides in the native apps versus HTML5 debate – it’s investing in both – and adds that the company’s API is likely to play an important role in future growth.

Developers can build their own apps using the API that tie into the Betfair exchange, with a handful available by the end of 2011, with more on the way. Android app ZoomBet is one prominent example, with its focus on speedy betting.

“Because we don’t have an adversarial relationship with our punters, it’s in our interests to broaden the ecosystem as much as we can with the API,” says director of technology Phil Dixon.

“We figured people are going to have niche ideas that we would never have or never pursue. The more apps out there that are very specifically relevant to consumers, the better.”

Betfair is also considering how it can make more use of mobile-specific features in its apps in 2012 and beyond, with location and social aspects to the fore in its thinking.

“My view is that the mobile is similar to what the exchange did to the web in 2000: there is going to be this game-changing way of betting which no one has figured out yet,” says Bhagchandani.

Outside the gambling industry, the key game-changer right now appears to be social: witness how Facebook is encouraging several industries to adopt its idea of frictionless sharing.

However, making more of social is a thornier task for companies like Betfair. It’s an inherently social service, in that it matches strangers with opposing views on the same sporting event, but its customers may not all be champing at the bit to share their activity with friends and family.

“There is a powerful angle there, but I don’t know what it is yet,” says Dixon. “It’s probably not streaming all my bets out to my Facebook feed! There are too many reasons why that’s wrong. And Facebook has not really engaged with gambling, although that’s changing.”

However, he adds that splicing social and location features could have great potential for a sports-betting service in particular, possibly inspired by the check-in mechanic popularised by Foursquare and Facebook in recent times.

“Think if you were in a stadium, and you knew that 2,000 people there were having a punt on Chelsea right now. Or if you walk past a pub and you’re an Arsenal fan, and 14 people are there having a punt on the match, would you like to join them?” he says, by way of illustration how this might work for Betfair.