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Facebook debuts 60 new Timeline apps, now approving apps from all developers

shaun — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:14:20 +0000

Logos from the new Timeline app makers

Facebook on Wednesday unveiled a host of new apps — more than 60 in total — that integrate with its new Timeline user interface. The social networking company also announced it will begin approving Timeline apps running on its Open Graph API from all developers.

Carl Sjogreen, a director of product management at Facebook, said during a presentation at a press event held Wednesday evening in San Francisco:

“The apps launched at f8 in the music, news and video verticals have seen tremendous success so far. But really, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Our vision for Timeline is that whatever you love, whatever story you want to tell, you can add to your platform.”

The 60 new apps cover categories such as travel, food, fashion and fitness from partners including Pinterest, Foodspotting, TripAdvisor and others. But, as Sjogreen pointed out, the really interesting part begins now that Timeline is truly open to accepting apps from developers big and small.

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Infographic: Linux lovers love big data

shaun — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:14:21 +0000

For anyone thinking the big data trend is a flash in the pan, some new evidence to the contrary. A hefty 75 percent of IT pros and developers responding to a new Linux Foundation survey have their eye firmly on this big data phenomenon.

More than three-quarters of the 428 respondents “expressed concern” about big data and nearly 72 percent (unsurprisingly) said they will use Linux to support big data applications. The respondents, while biased towards Linux — this is the Linux Foundation after all – do not work in a vacuum. A respectable 35.9 percent said they plan to use Windows to meet their big data needs.

The survey queried IT/IS people and developers in organizations with 0 million or more in annual revenue and 500 or more employees. Just less than half (41.6 percent) of the respondents are based in the U.S. or Canada.

For more of the data, scroll on.

Feature photo courtesy of scoobygirl

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Face and ‘effort’ controlled iPad game helps you outrun the competition (video)

shaun — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:14:20 +0000

If you’re looking for some exergaming action, but don’t have the rhythm — or lack of self awareness — for some existing sport game accesories, how about a game controlled by effort? Using your iDevice’s camera and accelerometer, BitGym has created a control system for playing iOS games while on your exercise equipment of choice (possibly not the trampoline though). The first release is a racer that converts rate of exercise to acceleration and head movement to steering. We’re told there’s an SDK too, so developers looking to trim-up can make their own gym-distractions. Fitness Freeway is available now, but if you want to see it in action, without breaking a sweat jog on over the break for a demo video.

Continue reading Face and ‘effort’ controlled iPad game helps you outrun the competition (video)

Face and ‘effort’ controlled iPad game helps you outrun the competition (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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App developers unite! Or at least organize yourselves a bit better

shaun — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:14:21 +0000

It’s only right that the creative individuals behind a multi-billion dollar industry should have access to their own professional body, but for some reason the idea has yet to take hold. That could change at CES, when Jon Potter — formerly of the Digital Media Association — will start selling membership to a new outfit called the Application Developers Alliance. His pitch will open with the concept that “there’s an interesting space in the application developer community that isn’t really organized” and then move on to offer services like an online collaborative network, shared product-testing facilities, discount training schemes and cloud services, and even government lobbying over issues like privacy and IP. Who knows? That sort of thinking could ultimately lead to a fully-fledged union movement to stand up to fat-cat platform owners and let them know who’s boss, but first things first eh?

App developers unite! Or at least organize yourselves a bit better originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Builds World’s Fastest Nonexistent Supercomputer

shaun — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:14:24 +0000

The 42nd fastest supercomputer on earth doesn’t exist. This fall, Amazon built a virtual supercomputer atop its Elastic Compute Cloud — a web service that spins up virtual servers whenever you want them — and this nonexistent mega-machine outraced all but 41 of the world’s real supercomputers. Amazon is the poster child for the age of cloud computing. Alongside their massive e-tail business, Jeff Bezos and company have built a worldwide network of data centers that gives anyone instant access to all sorts of computing resources, including not only virtual servers but virtual storage and all sorts of other services that can be accessed from any machine on the net. This global infrastructure is so large, it can run one of the fastest supercomputers on earth — even as it’s running thousands upon thousands of other virtual servers for the world’s businesses and developers.

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Nokia responds to questions over Symbian name swap

shaun — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:14:26 +0000

Nokia’s seems to have finally realized that it can’t just kill off a long-standing name like Symbian with a mere three-word mention (in parentheses) on its official blog. It’s now posted up a marginally more detailed statement in response to “heaps of questions” from Nokia fans about the name change, and it reads as follows:

“We are still using Symbian Belle with some audiences like developers but now we also have the flexibility of using Nokia Belle when referring to our greatest and latest Symbian software update.”

There, that should clear it up. Or maybe not. The idea of switching between different names for the same product might be considered bad branding, and the notion of developers being an “audience” is confusing too. But what more can you expect from a single sentence? In other news, the update also clarified that Nokia/Symbian Belle will be coming to the Nokia 500, along with the devices mentioned yesterday, and that it’s delay until February 2012 was due to this being a “major software update” that will “make such a big difference in the user experience.”

Nokia responds to questions over Symbian name swap originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS enjoys 3-1 advantage over Android in app starts, revenue

shaun — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:14:25 +0000

Despite the confident words of Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who predicted that Android would be the primary platform for developers, the current trends are still decidedly leaning toward iOS. That’s according to mobile analytics firm Flurry, which looked at developer commitments between iOS and Android over the past year.

Flurry projected that 73 percent of fourth quarter app starts will be by iOS developers compared to 27 percent for Android. That’s based on the first month of the fourth quarter. That would be slightly less than the 75 percent Apple had in the third quarter but on par with the second quarter when it also had 73 percent of app starts. Android actually had its best quarter in the first quarter, when it got 37 percent of app starts.

This data was pulled from new project starts in 2011, in which developers set up analytics for approximately 50,000 apps. Flurry said it’s used in about 25 percent of all iOS and Android apps.

On the revenue side, the comparison also favors iOS by a 3-1 ratio. Flurry found that for top apps running on both platforms, for every dollar generated on iOS, the same app will make 24 cents on Android. This is based on a sample of in-app purchases of top apps comprising millions of users on both platforms. Flurry said the big difference came down to the relatively lower penetration of Google Checkout. Compared to an iTunes account, which every iOS user needs to buy anything, not every Android user has a Google Checkout account, which adds an extra barrier to purchases of apps and in-app transactions.

Google has still a lot to crow about. As we’ve written, it’s hit 10 billion in Android app downloads and it appears to have pushed past iOS in the pace of recent downloads. Flurry estimates that 550,000 Android devices are now activated daily compared to an estimated 450,000 for iOS.

But the numbers show that it’s not just about device market share or the aggregate number of downloads. It’s about which users are more valuable to developers. There is still more of a culture of buying and spending money on iOS and that benefits Apple. Even Amazon with its Kindle Fire is proving to be a popular option for Android developers because those early tablet users appear to be open to buying a lot of things.

Google is working on this and its steps to integrate Google Checkout and Google Wallet are helpful. Also, moves to get new Android users to enter their credit card information when they set up their phone will be beneficial. And as the Android device market share continues to grow, developers can’t ignore the big opportunity there. But it looks like iOS is still very much their priority and despite the wishful thinking of Schmidt, it’s going to take a lot for Android to win the hearts of developers.

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Engine Yard plugs Node.js into its cloud

shaun — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:24 +0000

Engine Yard’s Platform-as-a-Service offering is adding support for Node.js applications.

This is just the latest indication that Node.js, a server-based and event-driven JavaScript framework, is becoming table stakes in cloud development and deployment environments. Engine Yard competitors like AppFog and Heroku, now part of Salesforce.com, already support the framework.

Developers like using Node.js because it supports JavaScript — a very popular language for client-side development — and because it is fast and scalable.

Specifically, Engine Yard said that the first release of Engine Yard Labs — a program to give developers early access to new features — will include support for Node.js. That access will be enabled on Friday, the company said.

There is a caveat however. According to a blog post announcing the news:

Features released through Engine Yard Labs are not officially supported and may or may not become supported as part of Engine Yard products in the future.

San Francisco-based Engine Yard started out focused on Ruby on Rails but added PHP support through its acquisition of Orchestra in August. Virtually every PaaS player from AppFog to Microsoft Azure is in an arms race to support as many languages as possible.

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Windows Phone Mango: 10 New Apps You Must Check Out

shaun — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 05:14:19 +0000

It’s never easy being a third-party app developer. Besides needing a great app idea, you must master your platform’s SDK, and then work hard to make sure your app has visibility in whatever platform ecosystem you’ve chosen to infiltrate. Enter Microsoft’s BizSpark program, which helps software devs bring their apps to market. One of the program’s major initiatives is Mobile Acceleration Week, a multi-city road show that’s designed to give guidance and support to Windows Phone Mango developers. Last week, the event was held in San Francisco, so we dropped by to hunt for the latest, greatest Windows Phone apps coming down the pike. Here are 10 of the most promising. Just be aware that not all are currently available in Marketplace.

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RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio

shaun — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:14:19 +0000

If you’re going to give your devs a nugget of info about some of your unannounced devices on a publicly available site, we hope you won’t be so surprised that word actually gets out about them. That’s exactly what happened to Research in Motion, as the company let it “slip out” to devs that two future BlackBerry OS7 smartphones — the Bellagio 9790 and Curve Touch 9380 — are inbound. The whole point in the message was to inform developers of what kind of resolution to expect in the new phones’ displays. From the bits and pieces we’re given, it appears that the Bellagio will have a 2.4-inch screen using 480 x 360 resolution to produce a respectable 245 PPI; the Curve Touch, on the other hand, will feature an identical res on a larger 3.2-inch display, resulting in a PPI of 189. The probability of hearing an official announcement this week is pretty high, but we’d say the intended (and likely unintended) message has come through loud and clear for now, wouldn’t you?

RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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