Google+Facebook+iPhone: 09/10/11

Saturday, 10 September 2011

The Top 5 Things the iPhone 5 Won't Have (But You Want)

Anticipation is running rampant for the next version of Apple's flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5, with evidence increasingly pointing to a release just around the corner in October.

As usual, Apple has been tight-lipped and hasn't said anything about the phone itself, but has focused its statements on iOS 5, the software that will power the next iPhone.

Developers and review websites pouring through the details embedded in beta-versions of the new software give enthusiast plenty of insight into what will realistically be expected in the next phone, but the rest of us can still dream.

The following is a list of things that would be nice, but have low probabilities of seeing the light of day from any Apple product.

Louder Speakers
An avant-garde device like Apple's next flagship smartphone will aim to be the best looking device in existence. These days, that means thinner and sleeker, and more advanced technology allows for that: memory gets more condensed, processors get smaller, and batteries hold more energy.

But one thing that won't lend to miniaturization, however, are speakers. Speakers, simply put, move air and create sound. The bigger they are, the more effective it will be at doing this -- there's no way to get around it.

The speakerphone on the iPhone 4 is one of the weakest, worst performers of any self-respecting smartphone. Given Apple's focus on design, its likely the functionality of the speaker will be sacrificed in the iPhone 5.

AM/FM Tuner
The integrated iPod allows you to load up the device with music and podcasts that you can playback anywhere. It's great for listening to preselected media, and with storage becoming cheaper, you can expect to carry even more around with you.

The only issue is listening the same library, no matter how large, can gets boring. There are apps like Pandora and Spotify that simulate radio with various data streams, but constantly streaming data takes a toll on your battery. Plus, for travelers, the radio is a quick and easy way to familiarize yourself with your surroundings.

Though the technology is simple, this will never happen however. Access to uncontrolled content is unconscionable in Apple's walled-garden.

In Apple's world, if you need more content, it should come through iTunes, or the forthcoming iCloud, where Apple can ostensibly control the quality, but also get a cut of the sale. Chances are slim Apple will change this.

Google Warns Users in Iran About Security Issue

Google took the unusual step of warning Gmail users in Iran to “secure their accounts,” a week after an unidentified hacker generated fake Web site verification certificates that may have allowed the Iranian state to monitor communications by its citizens, including dissidents.

On Google’s security blog late Thursday, Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering, said the company was “directly contacting possibly affected users.” He noted that users of the Google Chrome browser were unaffected by the malicious attack but urged “all users in Iran to take concrete steps to secure their accounts.”

The company spelled out five separate steps, beginning with changing passwords and verifying account recovery options to ensure that alternate e-mail addresses and phone numbers are updated. It went on to advise users to make sure unfamiliar apps and Web sites did not have access to their accounts and that e-mails were not being automatically forwarded to suspicious, unknown addresses.

Google Wants Seat at Dinner Table with Zagat Buy

Google’s acquisition of Zagat -- a trusted source of restaurant, hotel and destination reviews -- shows the Internet search leader means business about creating and maintaining original content in a way it hasn't before.

The recent deal means Google is no longer just aggregating content from other sites, but rather is collecting data and then making a judgment call based on the input it receives.

That could cause trouble since Google will be the company behind potentially negative or lackluster reviews from a highly trusted source. But on the whole, the two companies seem to be a perfect fit.

They are both big on aggregation and crowdsourcing.

Zagat aggregates information and opinions collected from users and then creates a valuable dataset that it can turn around and sell to others. Zagat guides offer vital information and ratings on restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, and activities in more than 100 countries based on annual surveys of more than 350,000 consumers worldwide.

That information could help Google be the uncontested go-to place online for local information. Watch out, Yelp, Facebook Place Pages, OpenTable, and maybe even Groupon and Living Social. After a rumored failed bid to buy Yelp nearly two years ago, Google means business this time with its deal with Zagat, which was founded by Nina and Tim Zagat.

iPhone 5, Droid Bionic and Samsung Galaxy S2 - All Set for Superphones Battle

Three of the most talked-about smartphones right now are Apple's iPhone5, Samsung's Galaxy S2 and the Motorola Droid Bionic as a potential battle royale looms among the three new phones.

The Droid Bionic is finally available in shelves, more than eight months after the device was unveiled. In the U.S., the Droid Bionic is available for $299 on a new 2-year contract with Verizon, or $599 at full retail.

The phone was hyped for months when it was originally announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. in January. The 4G LTE, dual-chip phone had been delayed for months as Motorola gave it numerous changes, allowing it to compete with the high-end phones of the industry.

Specs on the Droid Bionic are impressive. The phone comes with a 4.3-inch HD screen featuring the Corning Gorilla scratch-free screen, two cameras: front-facing for video chat and 8-mega-pixel back camera, Adobe Flash preloaded, 32 GB of memory and a slim frame. It has a dual-core 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM and runs on the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread operating system.

It comes with a cloud-friendly app Zumocast, which lets users bring videos, music, pictures and documents stored on their computers to their handset via remote access.

Galaxy S2 comes to the U.S. after selling a record 5 million units in 85 days in Europe and Asia and is the best-selling Samsung phone ever. In the U.S., Galaxy S2 would be carried by AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, whose version would be called Samsung Epic 4G Touch. Galaxy S2 is expected to come to Sprint's network on Sept. 16 and would be launched on AT&T from Sept. 18.

In what seems to be a twist in the tale, Verizon is not offering Samsung Galaxy S2, effectively making Motorola Droid Bionic the ultimate phone to receive all the attention in the days to come.

Meanwhile, Apple's upcoming iPhone 5 has not yet been officially announced, but rumors emerged suggesting an early October release was likely.

In the case of the iPhone 5, most of the features attributed to it are in the realm of rumors. But some features are more likely to be included in the phone than others. For sure, the iPhone 5 will feature the latest iOS 5 operating system, the A5 processor found in iPad2, a higher megapixel camera compared to the iPhone 4 and a slimmer and thinner design.

Bloomberg reports that Apple's next version will have an 8-megapixel camera and 1080p video recording, along with dual-LED flash, and will closely resemble the iPhone 4. As leaked by Sony CEO Howard Stringer, the iPhone 5 may also carry an "HD" FaceTime camera, similar to those shipping with the current MacBook Pro lineup.

Sprint iPhone 5 With Unlimited Data Rumored

Sprint will offer the iPhone with unlimited data service plans, according to Bloomberg.

That could give the carrier a competitive edge over AT&T and Verizon, both of which already offer the iPhone. "The advantage of unlimited is it's cheaper for big users," Bank of Montreal analyst Peter Rhamey told the news agency, which cited unnamed "people familiar with the matter" for its original information.

Neither Apple nor Sprint has confirmed that the latter will carry the iPhone, despite the steady drumbeat of rumor building for the past month or so. Apple is widely expected to release the next-generation iPhone, which the press has dubbed "iPhone 5," sometime in either September or October. The Bloomberg report suggests mid-October as the timeframe.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has estimated that giving Sprint the iPhone would boost the device's overall sales by 6 million units. A Sprint iPhone would also leave T-Mobile as the only U.S. carrier without an Apple phone in its device portfolio, although the latter's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, has offered the iPhone for years in Germany (and is allowing customers to preorder the iPhone 5, although without any mention of a release date or device specs).

Rumors suggest the iPhone 5 will include a larger screen and faster processor, along with an 8-megapixel camera and possibly a redesigned body. Some analysts have theorized that Apple also intends to release a line of low-cost iPhones, with an eye toward combating the number of inexpensive Google Android smartphones on the market.

NLRB Judge: Facebook activity ‘protected’

It has become conventional wisdom by both employees and companies that whatever you post to your Facebook page can potentially be used by your employer for disciplinary action, or even termination, but a decision made by a New York judge this week may change this thinking, and practice.

Administrative law Judge Arthur Amchan ruled that five employees who were terminated because of comments they made on their Facebook page should be rehired and he ordered the employees back to work, and further, that the employees be paid for their time off.

The five employees in question, who worked for the National Hispanics of Buffalo, complained about their workplace on Facebook, and they were fired for doing so. The five people subsequently appealed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Judge Amchan, in his decision dated September 2, 2011, ruled: “The Discriminatees [employees] engaged in protected concerted activity. Respondent terminated their employment in violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the Act [National Labor Relations Act enacted on July 5, 1935]”.

Google Releases HTML5 App for Music Beta on iOS

Google has launched an HTML5-based web app for its Music Beta service that can be accessed via the Safari browser on Apple iOS devices.

ZoomThursday Google revealed via Twitter that access to its Music Beta virtual locker is now available on iOS devices, but not by way of the traditional iTunes app. Instead, the rival Android developer is bypassing Apple scrutiny and taxation by granting access within the Safari browser itself using an HTML5-based "web app."

"Music Beta users - try the new mobile web app for iOS4 and listen to your music on the go: music.google.com," the company tweeted.

ZoomBy accessing the mobile website using Safari on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, users are greeted with a tight layout that's essentially broken down into four lists: Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists. A "taskbar" running horizontally across the top displays the song that's currently playing, a search option and a link back to the desktop site. To use the web app, users must increase the browser's cache database to 25 MB when prompted.

The drawback to Google's web app is that users can't do anything other than stream songs. Uploading, downloading and editing must be done via the desktop client. In fact, it's nearly identical to the Music app loaded on Android devices in appearance save for the popup options of storing songs offline, adding to playlists, or shopping for artists online. But at the same time, users can browse the internet via other pages while listening to their collection, and they can even "minimize" the browser entirely and still play their favorite tunes.

ZoomGoogle's Music Beta for Apple's iOS seemingly paves the way for the numerous HTML5-based web apps planned for the coming months. Taking the Safari route, these developers have reportedly grown weary of Apple's restrictions and revenue-munching fees, and have thus chosen to reach out to iOS customers by coming in through the back door unchecked: the Safari web browser.

Currently Google's Music Beta service is invite-only. It doesn't have an online store for purchasing tunes, but instead serves as a virtual locker that actuallydoes stream music in real-time unlike other services which merely download (cache) the songs first. Google's online storage/streaming service is also currently free, but that will reportedly change once the company drops the "Beta" label.

Google whipping up Android 'Jelly Bean'

“Jelly Bean" may no longer just be a sweet dessert – it may also be the next version of Google Inc.’s Android operating system for smartphones and mobile devices.

Tech site “This Is My Next" cited a trusted source as saying that “Jelly Bean" will continue Google’s tradition of naming Android builds after sweet treats in alphabetical order.

“We’re hearing from another well-regarded source that Jelly Bean is in the running for the name, but that the choice hasn’t yet been finalized by Google; for what it’s worth, the pickings are fairly slim for desserts with ‘J’ names, so Jelly Bean seems like a solid choice," it said.

According to the site, the next update may have some “fairly major architectural, functional, and design changes" from Ice Cream Sandwich, the present iteration of Android.

The site also cited its source as saying “Jelly Bean" will contain the “game-changing stuff" that had originally been scheduled for Ice Cream Sandwich.

“Since its launch at Google I/O in May, the implication has been that Ice Cream Sandwich will help unify Android’s phone and tablet efforts — represented right now by Gingerbread and Honeycomb, respectively — into a single trunk, but beyond that, very little has been said about what ICS will bring to the table," it said.

Also, it said that with rumors of the Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Nexus Prime from Samsung hitting fever pitch lately, it seems likely that an announcement is imminent.

Google Prompts Iranian Users to Re-Secure Their Gmail Accounts

After a certificate verification authority in the Netherlands was compromised, Iranian Google users became vulnerable to phishing, spying, and other cyber-attacks. Google is urging users to re-secure their Gmail accounts immediately.

The Fall of DigiNotar

DigiNotar, a Dutch root certificate authority, was compromised last week. This made users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks that could intercept usernames, passwords, and other personal data.

While 531 certificates were affected – including those belonging to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Facebook, and Twitter – the vulnerabilities only crop up for users in specific regions.

The most vulnerable region in this attack is Iran. In the aftermath of DigiNotar being compromised, Google has issued a warning to Iranian users. While Google notes that the Chrome users should be protected, the company nevertheless urges users to re-secure their account.

Google Reveals Energy Consumption to Tout Green Efforts

Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) search, Gmail, YouTube, Google+ and other Web services use less energy per user than a light left on for 3 hours, according to the search engine provider, which on Sept. 8 provided for the first time detailed statistics on its energy use.

The move, accompanied by a new Google Green Website, is designed to provide more transparency around not only Google's power consumption, but the energy savings associated with its clean energy efforts.

Google consumed over 2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) worth of energy in 2010. Moreover, the company plans to source 35 percent of its electricity use from clean power by 2012 through a combination of buying clean power directly and the clean power sources of the utilities it buys power from.

Google has invested some $800 million in solar and wind power sources that will create 1.7 gigawatts of renewable energy, which could power more than 350,000 homes.

Google also revealed that the energy used to support its Web services, which run in the cloud and are provisioned to users from data centers all over the world, generated 1.46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which could have been much greater.

"Without efficiency measures in our data centers our footprint would have been about twice as big. By purchasing and generating renewable energy, as well as buying high-quality carbon offsets, we bring our carbon impact to zero," the company explained on its Green Website.

Calculating energy consumption can be a dolorous task, but Google tried to make it fun. For example, the company said it takes more energy to send a message in a bottle than it does to use Gmail for a year, provided one counts the energy used to make the bottle and the wine consumed.

What about search, which uses only 0.0004 kWh of energy to retrieve the average search query? The energy required to do 100 Google.com searches is equivalent to 1 hour's use of a 30-watt laptop, 28 minutes of a 60-watt bulb burning or producing 1.5 tablespoons of orange juice.

Or try this one: Google's servers required to play 1 minute of YouTube consume about 0.0002 kWh of energy. To give folks an idea of what that means on a more practical level, it takes about 8 seconds for the human body to burn off that same amount.

Google will use Zagat's (so you don't have to)

Computerworld - Google bought Zagat Survey this week for an unknown amount between $50 million and $200 million. Zagat specializes in ratings for restaurants, hotels and travel destinations informed by the input of some 350,000 contributors.

The acquisition is Google's 104th. (The blog TechCrunch claims that the deal did not merit an FTC antitrust review, which happens automatically for any deal worth $66 million or more.)

Google offered Zagat competitor Yelp $500 million in December 2009, but the offer was rejected.

Silicon Valley companies often make acquisitions to gain access to talent, intellectual property or markets. But Google's Zagat buy is mostly about data and a winning methodology for maintaining it.

Zagat ratings are on a 30-point scale, with 30 being the highest score for each attribute. In the case of restaurants, attributes are "Food," "Decor" and "Service." The database behind all this has a number between zero and 30 associated with each location's attribute, as well as pricing and other information. It also contains a field where short blurby "reviews" are entered.

Data for Zagat's is gathered using a reliable methodology that's much harder to "game" than Google's "Places" service.

As an embarrassing example of how unreliable Places is, the New York Timesthis week published an expose about the apparently widespread problem of sabotage on the service. Unscrupulous business owners are apparently using the tools on Places to falsely label their competitors as "permanently closed."

Places data also shows up on Google Maps, associated with each business's location.

"Closed" or "open" status is either true or false. As such, it's a relatively easy thing to check. The hidden problem with sites like Places, as well as Yelp, is the unmeasurable "reviews" portion of each service. It's very easy for a business owner to write fake positive reviews for his own business, and fake bad reviews for the competition.

The Times also published another expose recently about the growing industry of fake restaurant and hotel reviews for hire.

Zagat's reviews are more reliable in part because participation is more time consuming and engaging, and also because Zagat uses editors to filter comments. Zagat also polices results, and threatens on its website to remove any establishment caught violating its Content Creation Policy.

There's no question that Zagat data will improve the quality of recommendations on Places and Maps.

App week: Google Music for iPhone, Facebook iOS update

Facebook has made some long-awaited changes to its app for iPhone and iPod touch. There's a new profile design as well as the ability to tag friends in posts and places. It's also easier to share external links. Sadly for iPad owners, there's still no sign of that mythical Facebook for iPad app.

iOS app news: Music Beta by Google arrives through web appAs Apple prepares to launch iTunes Match, Google has given its own cloud music locker a platform on iOS devices.Music Beta by Google now has a web app, accessible through the Safari browser. The interface is slick and attractive and while Music Beta remains free to invited users, it's definitely worth a try.

iPhone app news: Viz Profanisaurus curses its way onto iOSBritain's legendary swearing dictionary the Viz Profanisaurus has arrived on the iPhone, skirting Apple's strict rules on adult content. If you ever wanted to know the real meaning behind "Darth Vader's hat-stand" or Zipper Zeppelin" then grab this app and allow hilarity to prevail

Adobe's good week (Apple Talk Weekly)

This is typically the time of year when Apple breaks out its latest crop of iPods and updates to its iTunes software. Now, all signs point to Apple gearing up for the launch of its next iPhone instead. Given that, it's worth briefly turning our attention to Adobe, which had a particularly good week on Apple's platforms.

Let's start off with Adobe's Flash, which continues to not run on Apple's iOS hardware. Despite that hurdle, Flash-derived game Machinarium this week hit the No. 1 spot in Apple's paid apps category on the App Store. The $5 title, which was originally launched on on Adobe Flash, was recompiled for Apple's iOS, giving gamers a chance to play a game they couldn't in the browser that ships on the iPad.

Adobe also updated its Flash Media Server software this week, adding support for Apple's iOS. As David Meyer explains over on ZDNet, the software now lets broadcasters stream Flash video content in Apple's HTTP Live Streaming format, so it will work on iPhones, iPads and iPods. Worth noting is that the technology is only good for video content, and not things like Flash-based sites and games, where products like iSwifter, Skyfire, and Photon can fill in those gaps using a similar streaming-based approach.

Finally, there's Adobe Premiere, which the company says has seen a sales pick-up following Apple's introduction of Final Cut Pro X in June. In a press release covering its announcements at the IBC Conference in Amsterdam this week, Adobe said it has seen 45 percent growth of its Creative Suit 5.5: Production Premium product on the Mac. Adobe attributed that gain to the Final Cut switcher program it introduced in July that gives Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer users a 50 percent off discount for switching.

Read on to find out all of this week's big Apple news, rumors and answers to your Apple-related questions.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20104200-248/adobes-good-week-apple-talk-weekly/#ixzz1XYVDZpJd

No, iPhone apps will not cure your acne

Just in case you needed a government agency to confirm something completely obvious for you: no, an iPhone app that claims to cure acne will do no such thing.

It's kind of ridiculous that the FTC had to say anything about this at all, but I guess that's the world we live in. The apps in question claim that light therapy using different colored lights from the phones screen can help reduce acne-causing bacteria. Never wash your face again!

Obviously (or so one would think), that is a steaming pile of acne-covered BS. Even the FTC says so, which should end the lives of these scammy apps pretty quickly.

Google apologizes for this week's Docs outage

Google has officially apologized for this week's Google Docs outage.

On Wednesday, Google Docs--the search giant's productivity suite, featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation app, and drawing service--went down. In a statement, Google said that it was "aware" of the problem, and was working on a resolution. About an hour later, the service was brought back up.

Writing on the company's blog, Google engineering director Alan Warren, said that the company was "very sorry," adding that the service was hit by a "memory management bug" that was exposed following an update made to the Docs' real-time collaboration feature.

Warren explains it this way:

Every time a Google Doc is modified, a machine looks up the servers that need to be updated. Due to the memory management bug, the lookup machines didn't recycle their memory properly after each lookup, causing them to eventually run out of memory and restart."

Warren went on to say that when those machines restarted, more trouble ensued, causing the service's servers to improperly "process a large fraction of the requests to access document lists, documents, drawings, and scripts which led to the outage you saw on Wednesday."

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20103983-17/google-apologizes-for-this-weeks-docs-outage/#ixzz1XXhSsvQ1

Android Tablets, Take Two: All Eyes On PC Vendors, Retail Partners, Amazon

The first six months of the Android tablet era have been largely forgettable, as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) continues to sell millions of iPads each quarter and enjoy near-exclusive attention from mobile software developers. As Google (NSDQ: GOOG) looks ahead to the holiday shopping season and the release of an updated version of its tablet software, it’s banking on the desperation of traditional PC makers and desire of consumer electronics retailers to make more money on tablets than they do on iPads.

By now the failures are well-chronicled: Motorola (NYSE: MMI) priced the Xoom much too high for an iPad-centric audience to take notice, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 offered little to differentiate itself from Apple (European courts are taking a less diplomatic view), and HTC’s Flyer doesn’t appear to have even registered in the industry’s consciousness. Depending on which research firm you ask, Android partners currently hold between 20 percent and 30 percent of the tablet market, but that’s a number that measures shipments to channel partners like retail stores, rather than actual usage. You can take a look at some of these tablets and others, in our slideshow, embedded below:

Google’s own Android usage stats suggest that just over 1 percent of all Android devices in usage at the moment are tablets. With an Android installed base of around 130 million devices, that’s just 1.3 million tablets: Apple shipped (and almost certainly sold nearly all of them to end users)9.25 million iPads in just its last quarter.

So the picture is not pretty. However, Android got off to a similarly slow start as a smartphone operating system, only to take the worldwide market share lead in 2010. While there’s no assurances that the same thing could happen with tablets, Google’s John Lagerling, head of Android partnerships for the company, is betting that Google can make an impact in tablets by continuing to improve the software and by given partners more incentive to build and promote Android devices.

—Bugging out: Early decisions regarding pricing and hardware design certainly didn’t help Android tablets, but the main problem was the Honeycomb software itself. Google’s first version of Android designed specifically for tablets was a rush job that suffered from several persistent UI bugs and sluggish performance that made it nearly impossible for reviewers to recommend the devices over the iPad.

Google has promised those issues will be fixed with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, which will unify the smartphone and tablet versions of Android and is expected to present a much cleaner take on the tablet experience. And Google also benefits from Apple’s push toward raising interest in cloud services, Lagerling said: “We’ve been doing this for almost ten years. (Cloud services are) something that’s so well integrated, over time that value will be perceived by users.”

But Google is also reaching out directly to developers in hopes of getting them to produce more, and better, Android tablet applications. It has held a series of tablet-focused Android Developer Labs in cities around the world over the last month, with a few more planned for the upcoming weeks. Those labs have allowed Google engineers to interact directly with app developers helping them optimize their apps for tablets, and have likely given Google some direct feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to tablets.

—Post-PC era: Google started off building Android tablets with its smartphone friends like Motorola, Samsung, and HTC. But it has noticed greater interest in Android tablets among PC companies that are scrambling to stay relevant as PC sales continue to stagnate. Lagerling wouldn’t name names, but we’re talking about companies that have been smaller players in the PC market yet need to evolve.

The Schleswig-Holstein Question

Facebook has agreed to work with the German government to develop a code of conduct governing privacy on social networking sites. But why is this one country so reluctant to share online?

Facebook and Google want to improve the way we discover information and interact with one another, while selling us things along the way.

Many people see nothing wrong with the way these and other online companies monitor use of their systems to work out who might want to buy what, but the situation is different in Germany.

It is not as if the companies' services are unpopular there - a quarter of the German population are active Facebook users and Google has95% of the country's search market.

However, German citizens and their regulators are becoming well-known for giving these giants of the web a hard time.

In August, the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD) in Schleswig-Holstein banned all organisations in the state from having Facebook fan pages and embedding 'Like' buttons on their websites. The ULD said citizens were being monitored without realising it.

Earlier that month, privacy officials in Hamburg said Facebook could be fined for keeping biometric data collected through the site's facial recognition system.

And in 2010, federal and state data protection authorities forced Google to let Germans have their homes blurred out on the street-level images collected by the company's Street View vehicles.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens opted to have their properties obscured and Google gave up updating its German Street View images in April this year.

Drync Wine Pro for Iphone and Android on Sale for $0.99 Through September 30th

Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) September 10, 2011

Premier provider of mobile wine applications Drync LLC today announced that Drync Wine Pro has been reduced from $4.99 to 99 cents for a limited time. Available in both the iPhone and Android app stores, the discount will continue through the month of September.

Drync Wine brings over 1.3 million wines and 500,000 expert and user wine reviews to your mobile handset, and the web. Like having a personal sommelier in your pocket, Drync Wine delivers reviews, ratings, descriptions, and pricing to make you an expert on just about any wine. Drync lets you search for any wine, read reviews, save the wine to your virtual cellar, add personal tasting notes, and share via Facebook, Twitter, and email, all from your mobile phone. The Pro version is free of third-party ads and allows customers to store an unlimited number of wines in their "virtual cellar" (the free version has a 10 bottle limit).

"These are exciting times for Drync," said Brad Rosen, Drync's CEO and Founder. "We're getting ready to add some innovative new elements to the Drync experience, so we're giving people a chance to get access to the full app at a fantastic price for a limited time."

In addition to appearing in 3 Apple television commercials, Drync Wine was chosen as a top wine app by the New York Times and Macworld several times, and was selected by Mashable in their "5 Must-Have iPhone Apps for Wine Lovers" article. Drync Wine also placed #5 in the "Top 50 Wine iPhone Apps" by Vintank, a digital think tank for the wine industry, and again was chosen from a field of over 452 wine apps in their "26 most promising wine iPhone apps" article this year. To date, Drync Wine has delivered over 2 million wine search results to users.

Read more at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/09/10/prweb8783449.DTL#ixzz1XXg4AKis

Social media help spread fire info, but it's not always accurate

When fires broke out across Central Texas this week, thousands of people used social media sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to keep track of damage to their homes, evacuations and shelter information. Facebook in particular fostered community while offering neighborhood-specific details to families about when it would be safe to return home, for instance, or whether they had to boil water.

From Steiner Ranch to Bastrop, residents used information from traditional sources alongside hundreds of Facebook posts, Google Maps and photographs to learn where wildfires were still burning, whether their homes were safe and how to get their livestock out of harm's way.

Established pages such as Paul O'Brien's Steiner Ranch Post directed neighbors to dozens of items from cribs to gluten-free snacks to gas generators. The Post and Steiner Ranch Social Committee pages helped resident Leslie Powell find information about a wildfire near the neighborhood Sunday evening.

On the Steiner Ranch Facebook pages, people confirmed that they'd seen some houses, including hers, intact. During a stressful time, with her neighbors spread all over the city in hotels or friends' houses, it was easy to feel out of the loop, she said. "But on the site, it was as if we were all together in a room talking," Powell said.

Residents throughout Central Texas offered shelter for families, pets and even livestock. In Bastrop, some people on Facebook used a Flickr photoset and Google Maps to show which houses were still standing and which had been lost. As news of the wildfire spread around the country, relatives in other states used the pages to get information about their loved ones.

Information on social networks is not always correct, said David Neff, author and president of the Social Media Club Austin. "It's great to have instant information, but people don't see themselves as news sources and sometimes people are missing facts or their facts are wrong," he said.

In some cases, bad information resulted in misdirected aid efforts. Sara Kennedy, regional spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, said that though social networking sites helped her stay on top of quickly changing situations, misinformation about the Red Cross moved just as quickly.

"We don't take donations of goods like clothing, but because of sites like Twitter, our volunteers would have to turn away those donations," Kennedy said. "People were hurt again, not just in the wildfires, but the person who wanted to donate, along with the people who could have used that donation."

Facebook debuts Smart List, feature automatically groups friends

Taking a page from Google+, Facebook is debuting Smart Lists, a feature that automatically groups friends into coworkers, school buddies and people who live within 50 miles.

You'll also be able to customize messages and status updates to folks on a particular list, tech blog Gizmodo reports, avoiding the hassle of picking through your entire friends list or blasting party invites to people living on the other side of the world.

The feature, which is currently rolling out to select users, seems like a catch-up move by Facebook after rival Google launched its own social network earlier this summer and introduced an easy-to-use grouping system called Circles. Members could sort friends into unique groups and customize profile information for each set, eliminating the hassle of furiously scrubbing your profile before job interviews.

After Cat Vanishes at J.F.K., an Anxious Audience Urges More Action

Karen Pascoe left for Kennedy International Airport two weeks ago ready to make a fresh start. After 22 years in New York City, she was moving to San Jose, Calif., to take a job at a software design company. Naturally, her two cats, Jack and Barry, would be going with her.

But it didn’t turn out that way.

Half an hour after Ms. Pascoe went through security and handed over her cats to American Airlines workers, each cat in a secured plastic pet carrier, her cellphone rang. Five-year-old Jack, she was told, had gone missing in the inbound baggage processing area at Terminal 8, the door to his carrying case inexplicably left open.

“That’s when the whole nightmare began,” she said.

Now, Ms. Pascoe’s nightmare has turned into something of one for American Airlines, as pet lovers and sympathizers have seized upon Jack’s cause. As Jack remains at large, the wall on the American Airlines Facebook page has been besieged by impassioned pleas for the airline to do more to find him, and provide more frequent updates to those around the country who are anxiously awaiting word of Jack’s whereabouts.

Jack is not the first pet to go missing at Kennedy. Last September, Ramsay, a 3-year-old Yorkshire terrier, disappeared while in the care of British Airways, setting off a highly publicized search that was, it seems, unsuccessful: Just this week, Ramsay’s owner posted his picture on a Facebook page for lost and found pets. “I still think about him and miss him daily,” she wrote. “Love you Ram Sam Sam!”

On Thursday morning, a comment posted by Cyril Sturm, one of several Facebook users who changed their profile pictures to an image of the missing-cat poster for Jack, read: “AA — checking in this morning wondering what was done last night to locate Jack? Was food and water placed and monitored? Details of how the search is being conducted would go a long way with the community that is focused on Jack’s return.”

“Is there a reason u cannot share this information?” the message continued.

A comment posted by Gary Otto, whose Facebook picture is of another cat, accused the airline of having “nothing but contempt” for its customers, saying, “The won’t even recognize any Jack the Cat supporters or give any sort of update, instead thinking if they ignore us we will go away.”

There has even been mention of a pet lovers’ boycott of the airline.

In an e-mail, Edward Martelle, a spokesman for American Airlines, detailed the lengths to which the airline has gone to locate the cat, including setting up humane traps, issuing a “pet Amber alert,” and holding daily briefings “to review progress and generate ideas for locating Jack.”

The airline also hired a “pet search-and-rescue specialist,” who scoured the airport with a scent-tracking dog and Ms. Pascoe, who was flown back from California to help search.

The baggage room where Jack apparently escaped is a busy, noisy area of at least a few thousand square feet, Mr. Martelle said.

The airline’s efforts to find Jack “initially were disrupted by the evacuation caused by Hurricane Irene,” Mr. Martelle wrote, adding that now, “our J.F.K. employees continue to expand efforts to find him.”

Ms. Pascoe said the airline’s efforts seemed to have been ratcheted up as word of the incident spread by way of news reports on television, on blogs and in newspapers, and as a Facebook page, Jack the Cat Is Lost in AA Baggage at J.F.K., gained traction. As of Friday afternoon, 13,592 people had “liked” it.

Sims Social Zooms Past FarmVille to Become Number 2 Game on Facebook

So you thought planting crops and ploughing fields was the quintessential casual game activity on Facebook? Think again. As we reported two weeks ago, The Sims Social — Electronic Arts’ latest version of its bestselling avatar-based franchise — is growing faster than a FarmVille weed. A week after its release, Sims Social had 4.6 million players logging in every day, which made it the 10th most popular game on Facebook.

Now things are looking even better for EA, and even more serious for Zynga. In just two weeks, Sims Socialhas leapfrogged nine games, including longstanding Zynga hits Empires & Allies, Texas Hold ‘Em, Pioneer Trail and — yes — FarmVille. In the last 24 hours, 9.3 million people played Sims Social, while 8.1 million played FarmVille, according to Facebook tracking site Appdata.com.

Next in the Sims’ sights: CityVille, the roost-ruling Zynga hit with 14 million players entering daily.

Part of what’s going on here is the successful transposition of the Sims, which had such addictive qualities it sold more than 140 million copies in its various PC versions. By letting you connect to your Facebook friends’ avatars, the Sims Social is finally delivering on the promise of The Sims Online, a massively multiplayer game released in 2002 and shut down in 2008.

Beta 7 for iPhone 5 release date: iOS 5 points to announcement any day

iOS 5 has reached its record seventh round of beta testing, pointing to the iPhone 5 seeing release date any day now after an imminent announcement event. iOS is the operating system and interface which drives Apple’s iPhone and iPad lines, and while the new iOS 5 will work on various devices, history points to its release being nearly simultaneous with that of the iPhone 5 as Apple has structured its new iPhone launches in that manner for the past four years (here’s more on the iPhone 5 release date).

Never in iOS history have there been this many rounds of developer beta testing. Then again, never has there been this much time elapsed between the introduction of new iPhone models. The iPhone 5 will arrive at least fifteen months after the iPhone 4, going against Apple’s traditionally consistent twelve month spans. So what’s magical about beta 7? The sheer number of beta releases suggests that iOS 5 has essentially been ready for some time, and that Apple’s software team has merely been taking advantage of the extra time for additional fine tuning. And if Apple has set things up such that iOS 5 is already finished, that means it expects the iPhone 5 to be ready any day now. A couple of factors still influence just when the new iPhone will see announcement and a release date…

Oracle, Google CEOs ordered to mediation

Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes Oracle's Java patents.

Oracle acquired the Java programming language through its purchase of Sun Microsystems in January 2010.

In an order on Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal ordered both Ellison and Page to attend a settlement conference on September 19. A trial is currently scheduled for October.

How a Google Drive Revival Would Help Your Work

Long ago Google internally tested a file storage service code-named Platypus, but the world referred to it as Google Drive or Gdrive. In 2008 they killed off the project, instead allowing users to upload files to Google Docs in the familiar interface we use today.

Meanwhile, "store your files in the cloud" services lik eBox .net, Sugarsync, and Dropbox have gained in popularity, with Dropbox recently valued at $4 billion.

People want their files online but aren’t ready to work exclusively in the cloud as Google hopes. Yet there are recent clues that Google may be bringing Google Drive back, including code in the open source Chromium browser that references "drive.google.com." And some Google Docs users seeing messages saying, "Items have been removed from your Google Drive", as TechCrunch reported. Is Google preparing to give us the cloud sync service we're looking for?

The Problem

Google loves the cloud because Google is the cloud. Given a choice, they would have everything cloud-based. Many of us are embracing that approach and its benefits, but realize that we haven’t yet reached a point where everything can be cloud-based. We still need our local storage and programs.

Google Docs provides the option to upload your files to the cloud and work on them there, and even to access them while offline, but if you want to work on them with a local editor, things get messy with uploading and downloading, managing versions, installing syncing plugins, and so forth.

Getting our files into the cloud is the first and most important step. If Google wants us in the cloud, make the transition easy and we’ll be more likely to follow.

How It Should Work
A better way would be to let us have our local files, but sync them to the cloud so you can access and edit them there as well. It would be the best of both worlds. If you’re at the office and want to work on a Word document on your desktop, you pull it up from your hard drive like you always have. If you’re on the road and want to make some changes, you pull out your tablet, open Google Docs, and make the edits. In either case, the changes are immediately synced between your devices and the cloud so you always have access to the latest version.

Granted, syncing all your files with Google won’t allow you to edit them all in the cloud, but the most popular file types can already be edited through Google Docs, and as more files get uploaded, more opportunities will appear for additional apps.

Google warns Iranian users to change passwords

Google is going on the offensive, advising its Iranian users to change their email passwords to avoid falling victim to online attacks.

The news comes after the massive DigiNotar breach on July 19, during which an Iranian hacker stole a Google authentication certificate from DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority.

The theft allowed the hacker to set up fraudulent Web pages under a legitimate Google domain name, and in turn harvest the personal information from any visitors to his spoofed sites.

[Cracked Digital Certificates Endanger Entire Online 'Web of Trust']

"We learned last week that the compromise of a Dutch company involved with verifying the authenticity of websites could have put the Internet communications of many Iranians at risk, including their Gmail," Eric Grosse, Google's VP of security engineering, wrote on a company blog.

The Iranian perpetrator, who calls himself "Comodohacker," also claims to have stolen certificates for 531 sites, including Facebook, Skype, Mozilla, Microsoft, Yahoo, Android and Twitter, as well as domains belonging to the CIA and Israel's Mossad.

In stock: iPhone 5 release date on tap as Apple hides iP4 ship times

Apple still wants to sell you an iPhone 4. It just won’t tell you how long it’ll take you to receive it. The iPhone 5 releas date approacheth, as best evidenced by Apple’s slow-down of iPhone 4 and 3GS ship times earlier this week from its usual one day to a more cautious quote of one to three days. That means the company has pared down existing iPhone inventory to the point that it has to have additional units manufactured on demand, resulting in longer ship times. But a day after admitting the iPhone 4 was on the way out, Apple restored ship times to the original twenty-four hour quote. Now the company has nixed shipping estimates altogether, listing the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS as simply “in stock.” In other words, get ready to get in line for the iPhone 5.

Inventory draw-downs are often the last stage of the phase-out of an existing model. Apple has, in some past instances, been known to bleed inventory down to nearly zero before launching a new model, perhaps most notably when the iPod 2 all but completely disappeared from shelves weeks before the launch of the iPod 3. What’s notable in this instance is that the iPhone 4 appears to be completely disappearing rather than sticking around as the new bargain iPhone model. That points to one of two iPhone 5 scenarios, which won’t be confirmable until its release date…

Sprint iPhone 5 will get unlimited data plan (at first): report

Sprint iPhone 5 rumors have been gurgling around the Web for a while now, but today comes the next best thing to an actual launch party – a report from Bloomberg News, sourced to anonymous insiders, confirming the autumn arrival of a Sprint-powered Apple handset.

Interestingly, according to Bloomberg, the SprintiPhone will be available with an unlimited data plan, which would help set the device apart from rival AT&Tand Verizon-powered devices.

"It’s a competitive disadvantage if your two larger competitors have the iPhone and you don’t. Getting the iPhone closes that gap," Matthew Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities LLC, told Bloomberg. True. And the gap would conceivably close that much faster if Sprintoffers what Verizon and AT&T currently do not: The ability to slurp down an unlimited amount of multimedia content, for a single, flat fee.

Horizons readers will remember that both AT&T and Verizon once offered unlimited data plans, although in recent months, both carriers shifted to tiered plans. It's worth noting here that only serious data hogs reallyneed an unlimited plan – the lowest of the current Verizon plans, for instance, sells for $30 a month, and provides for up to 2GB of data, which is plenty for light to regular users. Still, "unlimited" does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The Sims Social bests FarmVille as the second-largest Facebook game

The Sims Social, based on the popular Sims computer game franchise, has supplanted FarmVille as the No. 2 game on Facebook, according to AppData.com, a site that tracks Facebook apps.

More than 9.3 million people played the Sims Social in the last 24 hours, compared with 8.1 million who played FarmVille.

The single-day milestone is significant because FarmVille is considered to be one of the most successful social games on Facebook. Launched in June 2009 by Zynga Inc., the game zoomed to the top of the charts as hundreds of millions of players rushed to plow virtual fields on FarmVille. At its peak, nearly 32.5 million people played the game in a single day, according to AppData.

But FarmVille has ebbed in popularity as players moved on to other titles, many of them published by Zynga, a San Francisco company that has declared its plans to sell its shares on the public stock market. (Current turbulence in the stock market has put those plans on hold, at least temporarily.)

The Sims Social, published by Electronic Arts Inc., is among the few games that have been able to touch Zynga's top titles.

Still, EA's victory may be more symbolic than substantial. Zynga's CityVille, launched in December, is still top dog on the daily chart, with nearly 14 million users. When measured on a monthly basis, Zynga holds four of the top five games on Facebook, including FarmVille with 35.7 million players versus 34.3 million for the Sims Social, which is in fifth place.

Facebook Aims to Gets Smart by Grouping Friends

Facebook is working on a product called Smart Lists that will start automatically grouping users’ friends into lists by work, school or geographic proximity.

The new feature is strikingly similar to the main feature of Google+, which allows users to place their friends into different “circles,” so that users can tailor who sees their posts and photos.

Facebook has always allowed users to manually put their friends into different Friend Lists. But now, in addition to automatically grouping friends into lists, the new product will allow users to set their News Feed so that they can receive updates from certain lists, the screen shots show. Smart It allows users to tailor the content they see and make their News Feed – the site’s most popular feature – even more relevant.

The new product, which hasn’t yet been announced, was leaked via a Twitter post by Nick Starr, a Facebook user who accidentally received the images. It was earlier reported by Mashable and TechCrunch.