News from category ‘Other’

First Apple’s iAd was Nissan Leaf ad. Users who viewed Nissan's Leaf electric car iAd spent 90 seconds with the interactive advertisement -- ten times longer than customers will spend with a traditional ad. Moreover, people are five times more likely to click on interactive advertisement than they are a traditional online display ad. One more proof of iAd success was made by Unilever, maker of Dove shower products, said its initial advertisement proved to be successful, with 20 percent of viewers checking the ad multiple times, and a percentage in the double digits seeking further information about the product. iAds are also popular among iPhone users,  because they don't have to leave their app and launch a browser to view them.

iAd success helps Apple to take up more than half of the mobile advertising market in 2010. And developers, too, have found success with the new iAd platform: Apple providing them a 60 percent cut of the advertising revenue.

Recently released Apple's rechargeble batteries were found to have many of the same characteristics as the Sanyo Eneloop model HR-3UTG batteries first developed in 2005 and launched for sale in 2006. Both batteries retain over 75% of their charge after three years of use. In addition to having identical performance, the Sanyo rechargeables also have the same minimum capacity of 1900 mAh. Moreover, Apple's new rechargeable batteries do not offer any indication of who manufactured them.

Experts took apart one of the AA batteries from Apple, but did not find any evidence on the inside that they are manufactured by Sanyo. The batteries are the first Apple’s product, which doesn’t have an Apple logo on them. In fact, the only thing known about these batteries is what that they were made in Japan. Sanyo's corporate headquarters is in Japan, and its Eneloop batteries are manufactured also in Japan.

And batteries have almost similar prices: Apples batteries retail for $29 and Sanyo Eneloop – for about $22.

Apple has not commented this situation.

Would you like to get colorful sleeves for your iPad? Many users will be pleased to hear that the company Sumo has already thought about it and developed an unusual design of sleeves for your device from the company Apple.

Mobile Edge has released six new sleeves for iPad by Sumo, which are designed to protect your tablet device from scratches and bumps when you take it with you for work while traveling abroad. These neoprene sleeves are used as a cushion that protects the iPad’s display, but they look beautiful and stylish. New sleeves will be available in two models: Camo or Graffiti, and will also be offered in different colors.

These funny sleeves would cost a user $ 19.99 for each, and on its back side you can easily find the service life.

Today mobile media company ParkVu introduced an interesting Facebook app called "Music WithMe", which allows publishing your music library from iTunes to Facebook. After publishing the tracks it contains may be shared, commented on, liked and discussed by your friends.

To use it properly you should also install a desktop app, which is now available only for Windows (Mac will be supported soon).  When the setup will be over the app will show your tracks in its Facebook application here. Note, that your friends also must install this app in order to comment on and like your tracks (and without it the app looks pretty useless).

Statistical analysis of the attractiveness of user profile pictures from the dating site OkCupid shows that iPhone owners have more sex than BlackBerry and Android owners.

Here is the chart that shows average number of sexual partners among iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users:

The chart pretty much speaks for itself. The numbers were calculated for all three brands for 30 year-olds, so it's not a matter of older, more experienced people preferring one phone to another.

Here is a another plot by age:

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This week Apple announced the retirement of the iPhone and iPod division head Mark Papermaster.  Various resources started immediately discuss whether Papermaster was fired or he left on his own record as no information was revealed on that.  Some of them speculated that it may be possibly connected with the recent antenna issue situation and its negative consequences for the company's reputation.

Mark Papermaster came to Apple from IBM two years ago. That was accompanied with a legal battle between these two companies as IBM was afraid that Mark could tell Apple too many secrets. In January of 2009 a settlement was reached and IBM obtained a permission to "keep an eye" on Mark's duties at Cupertino's company. But that legal dispute showed that Papermaster was not a best choice to become a leader of iPhone and iPod division.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked to reporters at yesterday's Techonomy conference about Google Android and Apple iPhone. Worth watching:

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According to a new report, published by Philip Elmer-DeWitt from Fortune, Apple's share on the portable PC market grew from 5 to 12% in the second quarter, making it the third world biggest mobile PC vendor after Dell and HP in volume sales.

Such data was revealed by Chris Whitmore, who is an analyst Deutsche Bank.

"Our retail checks suggest this share shift continues in July, where the iPad is directly cannibalizing demand for other vendors' notebook products. Remarkably, Apple's traditional MacBook business posted accelerated unit growth on a Y/Y basis in 2Q despite the launch of the iPad while every other Top 5 vendor slowed."

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Many people create interesting things for iPhone and make money on selling it. But there are also ideas which are totally ridiculous. Today Mashable posted a funny list of unnecessary accessories for iPhone, which is worth attention. Here is it.

1. iPhone TV Hat



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Along with a special press conference, dedicated to iPhone 4 antenna issue, Apple published a special page about the problem (here = http://www.apple.com/antenna/). You may remember we wrote about a series of videos posted on this page, where the company tried to convince everybody that almost every smartphone has an antenna issue. RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9700, Samsung's Omnia II, HTC's Droid Eris and Nokia's N97 were taken as examples. Now these videos are deleted from the Apple's site, though they are still available at the company's official YouTube channel.

After the press conference Apple's competitors claimed that their phones do not experience signal attenuation as much as the iPhone 4 and were dissatisfied by Apple's way of solving the antenna issue.

Recently tech journalist Stephen Fenech wrote an interesting iPhone 4 review for Australian Daily Telegraph. Besides saying that iPhone 4 is "a massive jump" in the smartphone industry, Fenech also tried to reproduce the antenna issue. To make sure his results are correct he used his phone on 6 different Australian carriers - Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and 3 other networks in different parts of Sydney. Here is his conclusion:

"I tried the 'death grip' on the bottom left while making test calls in areas I knew to have weaker reception and the times I did manage to reduce the signal bars... my calls were still not affected. The worst thing that happened was a web page I was loading timed out but after refreshing it came up fine. I even managed to watch a YouTube video over 3G while in the 'death grip.'"

Fenech also added that the "death grip" is unnatural and iPhone 4 call quality was significantly improved in comparison to iPhone 3GS.

At the Black Hat security conference, which is being held this week, research firm Lookout told about malicious application that was found in Google's Android Market. It was collecting private data (such as phone's SIM card number, text messages, browsing history, voice mail password and subscriber identification) and then sending it to a web site imnet.us, which is owned by an unknown person in Shenzhen, China.

According to VentureBeat report, written by Dean Takahashi, an app was claimed to load custom background wallpapers and was submitted by Jackeey Wallpaper.

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After using two iPhones 4 for six weeks Wall Mossberg finally reviewed the newest Apple’s handset.

So, one phone was obtained by Mossberg personally, while the second was provided by Apple. Walt found that iPhone 4 works better than iPhone 3GS in those areas where there is a "strong AT&T coverage", but when it comes to weak coverage areas iPhone 3GS performs better, because it drops less calls and 'no service' status can be seen rarer. That became a reason for Mossberg to not recommend iPhone 4 with its limited AT&T data plans to people who "live, work or travel" in areas with poor reception signal.

Walt also found that the 'death-grip' issue is not a problem as it causes signal bars to fluctuate only and even to rise in some cases.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple started to investigate the compatibility problems of iOS4 and iPhone 3G. The company's spokesman explained that such a decision was made because of numerous user reports, which reveal that after installing iOS4 on iPhone 3G the latter started to work more slowly, became overheated and its battery life had significantly decreased.

Some people are annoyed and disappointed because of the situation:

“This phone has gone from being a dream to constantly annoying me. Not a way to make friends. I would upgrade to an iPhone4, but I’m feeling pretty angry that Apple has forced my hand by making my 3G unusable”.

iOS4 version for iPhone 3G does not support multitasking and Bluetooth keyboards, which was disabled because of RAM requirements, according to Apple.

As you remember, few weeks ago iTunes Store was hacked and the top list of the Books category had been filled with a bunch of obscure books. That was achieved by a number of unauthorized charges that were made on accounts of several iTunes users, who eventually lost few hundred dollars. In turn Apple deleted developers who were found to use the fraudulent purchases.

These days Apple added new layer of security which now require every user to enter the security code of their credit card each time they register a new device or computer with their account, according to Different District blog. So if earlier malicious user just needed to guess a password for the account in order to receive and/or resell the acquired information to fraudulent buyers, after Apple’s security innovation it will require more efforts to do that.