News tagged ‘Free’

Apple’s iBookstore is beginning to open internationally. It is accessible only on iPads via iBookstore app. Some day the service will be extended to iPhones and iPods.

Several international sites report that Apple's iBookstore is avaliable in several new countries. For the time being, international iBookstore offerings appear limited to free Project Gutenberg titles. Apple is doing its best to sign-up publishers in other markets, while local regulatory and business concerns are slowing the effort in some countries (like the UK).

Some time ago one of the TV-channels in San Francisco, California, broadcasted a news report that highlighted a woman who wanted to purchase an iPad with cash but was denied by Apple representatives in her request. Diane Campbell, who lives on a fixed income and was just saving money for an iPad, became a victim of the company's policy that ensures the device is properly distributed.

Now we received information that Apple had changed its policy and presented her the device for free. The company's senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson told the newscast Apple will stop following credit-only policy.

"It came to our attention that Diane, through your story was very interested in buying an iPad with cash. And we made a decision today to change that."

Two Apple employees came personally to Diane's home to deliver her an iPad for free. Later she talked to the ABC station with an iPad in her hands and said:

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YouPorn, one of the world's largest porn sites, has announced that they will be soon iPad compatible. The site has begun re-encoding their entire video archive to make them viewable on the iPad. In the App Store parental controls can limit access to content inappropriate for minors. On the web, this gets much more difficult.

Twitter, a wildly popular social networking service, now has its own official iPhone app that was released in AppStore.

The release of the Twitter app falls in line with the company’s announcement last month about its acquisition of Atebits’ Tweetie. Twitter had then stated that Tweetie would be re-branded to be the official Twitter app and would be offered for free.

Tweetie is now Twitter! We didn’t just do a name change, we’ve added a bunch of new stuff

• Search has been reorganized, now you can search all tweets and find users in the same spot, view
• Top Tweets and Browse Suggested users.
• Search results now include Top Tweets, try it with Trends…winner combo!
• You can now use Twitter without an account! Search, Browse uses, view trends and top tweets.
• Sign-up is now availabile within the application as well, complete with Suggested user list.
• More tab has been re-organized to accomplish all this. Users with one account can add a second account under the Accounts and Settings button here.
• Actions we’ve found people use most, like Retweet have been moved to the main actions bar.
• Minor tweaks were made to tweet rendering so they match Twitter.com tweets

Here are several screenshots of this app:

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An open letter published by Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke reveals their true position to Apple. They say Apple wants to "undermine the next chapter of the web". They also believe that the consumers must have a free access to the content regardless to their computers, browsers or any other stuff.

"No company - no matter how big or how creative - should dictate what you can create."

In answer to Jobs' saying that Flash is a closed system Adobe co-founders informed that specifications for Flash are published and available for free so anyone can make their own Flash player. What Apple does is creating walls for their applications and content, thus creating a threat to a future of free Internet, which actually cannot be controlled by anyone. The letter ends with these words:

"What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web."

It is interesting to notice that Adobe also started new advertising campaign on popular tech news sites and in newspapers. Their ads list technologies they "love". One of them even contains the tongue-in-cheek inscription "We [heart] Apple".

Recently UK Times published a report about Nintendo's current situation. The company's president Satoru Iwata said that he had already won the war with Sony and now it is Apple's turn. Satoru called it Nintendo's "enemy of the future".

The war with Sony was ended after last holiday season, when Wii had outsold Sony Playstation by almost double, though this year the sales of Nintendo's device in the first quarter were down 21% in compare to the first quarter of 2009.

So now the competition is held between Nintendo DS and Apple's iPod touch and iPhone platform. The latter has advantage of relatively low prices for games (moreover, some of them are even free). There are also studies, that reveal that people who like to play would rather carry an iPhone than a DS.

As you remember, last week Steve Jobs posted a letter about his thoughts on Flash and that same day Adobe’s CEO commented on it.  Sometime later chief technology officer Kevin Lynch also expressed his opinion on the situation:

"It's not about HTML5 vs. Flash. They're mutually beneficial. The more important question is the freedom of choice on the Web."

In the meantime, Instead of using plugin-based technologies like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, Apple created a new client-side framework Gianduia to produce quality online applications for retail users.

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iPad USB Camera Connection Kit is much more useful as it seems. Max Sha, an experienced user, was able to access external hard drive with this kit. All you need is a jailbroken iPad, an external drive, a split-USB cable to give the drive some power and a terminal of some sort (f.e. MacBook) to mount the external storage. While it is a little unwieldy, it shows that Terabytes of external storage for iPad is possible.

Here is a complete step-by-step guide from Max Sha:

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Dropbox is a great service similar to Apple’s iDisk. It lets you store your files on a server and immediately share your pictures, documents and other files across different computers and phones. Users can get 2Gb of server storage for free. There is an app for desktops, iPhone and other phones. recently a special version for iPad was released.

You can register and download the application for your desktop computer here (Windows, Mac and Linux). Here is a link to a free iPhone/iPad application in AppStore.

With DropBox on the iPad you can:

• Access your Dropbox on the go.
• All the contents of your Dropbox are available for viewing.
• You can even stream music and movies in your Dropbox straight to your iPad.
• Upload files and sync them to your Dropbox.
• Upload photos from your iPad and email its public link to a friend in less than a minute.
• Export files to other iPad apps.

Ryan Tate from Gawker quoted people closed to the matter who said that Steve Jobs is dissatisfied with the free app New York Times Editor's Choice. The reason is that it has a limited content of the daily NYT.

The story started when some time ago Amazon made a deal with Times and received exclusive rights on its full content. So now if you have Kindle you should pay to gain full access to the NYT edition. The same full content is also available on the web and it's free. Moreover, the deal apparently implies that other competitors may have the full text but they must sell it at a higher price.

Few days ago the New York Times decided to raise the subscription price on the Kindle, from $13.99 to $19.99 per month. That was no wonder because the NYT warned before that they want to charge readers nearly $20-30 per month. With such a deal Apple was left with a truncated version of the NYT for the iPad. Ironically, the same version for iPhone remains to deliver the full content.

Obviously, that is the reason why Apple has been ignoring the NYT iPad app recently. It is even not listed as a "noteworthy" or "favorite" in the App Store. User reviews are also mainly negative and many people ask where the full content can be found.

Finally the jailbreak for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch from the Dev Team is available for download. It's free and untethered and it's called "Spirit". The jailbreak supports every iDevice with firmware version 3.1.2, 3.1.3 or 3.2.

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As you remember, last Friday the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team searched the house of Gizmodo's editor who reportedly had iPhone 4G prototype. Well now we have information from MarketWatch that the steering committee which oversees the REACT team consists of Apple, Google, Adobe and other companies. This data was taken from California's High Technology Crime Advisory Committee's annual report dated 2008.

Moreover, it is reported that the steering committee doesn't have "defined membership" and its meetings can be visited by all of the company representatives. Apple representatives did not visit any recent meeting, but the company is currently listed amongst companies that have open investigations to attend. That means that Apple may be a director of a Friday episode with Jason Chen.

But today's news reveals that is not the end of the story.

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Apple has released a new iPhone ad called "Family Man". The commercial highlights the ability for the iPhone 3GS to capture and playback video as well as a few applications from the App Store:

- Jamie Oliver; 20 Minute Meals ($7.99)
- Elmo’s Monster Maker ($3.99)
- Viper SmartStart (Free)

Watch the video:

Android phones have an advantage over Apple's iPhone in navigation, because Google includes their free nice Navigation program, while Apple doesn't have built in navigation in Maps. Here are some good news for iPhone users:

Google confirmed at a London press conference that it plans to bring free satnav to other smartphone platforms, including the iPhone, although it wouldn’t say when.

Unlike TomTom or iGo software, Google’s satnav software doesn’t store maps on the device but downloads them on-demand from the internet. However "Google Maps pre-caches the entire route," said Mobile Maps product manager, Steve Lee. "It needs a data connection when you ask for navigation. But while driving to your destination, if you intermittently lose the connection, it will still carry on. As long as you stay on the route."

Users can choose from several viewing options: standard maps and directions, satellite view and access to Street View, plus live traffic data. Sound like a good deal.

Freelancestudios created another cool accessory for iPhone - this time it's an "iRetrophone" dock that allows you making calls with a retro handset. The design is obviously borrowed from Henry Dreyfuss, prolific industrial designer who in 1937 created the iconic type of phone.

The base is compatible with any iPhone. We also recommend installing the iRetroPhone Rotary Dialer app ($0.99) so that the pair looked really authentic.

iRetroPhone is available for purchase in ping, clear or black resin here for $195.