Sarah Perez

Vdio, the video streaming service which launched into public beta this April as a complement to Rdio’s subscription music service, is today becoming available to all. Earlier, the service was available for preview in the U.S. and U.K., but only to those who were already paying Rdio Premium or Unlimited customers.

Today, however, anyone can sign up for the Vdio TV and movie streaming service (which is still only available in the U.S. and U.K.), even if they don’t use Rdio.

The video streaming service was originally part of Rdio founder’s Janus Friis’s vision, Rdio and Vdio (now outgoing) CEO Drew Larner explained to TechCrunch earlier this year. But it had taken some time for the company to secure the content deals that would allow it to compete in the competitive video streaming market more effectively – an area which is dominated by the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and now Amazon, among others.

Vdio includes content from  Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, Sony, CBS, ABC, Disney and more, with a focus on offering new releases which users can either rent or purchase, in addition to other classics. It’s currently seeking rights from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Time Warner’s HBO. After purchasing the content, users can then stream the movie or show on the web or the companion iPad application, which also supports AirPlay for streaming to Apple TV.

In addition, the service integrates with Facebook, allowing users to sign-up with their Facebook credentials, as well as see which of their Facebook and Twitter friends are using the service and what they’re watching. (Netflix has also recently added Facebook integration for a similar purpose).

With today’s public launch, users can rent or purchase videos immediately after sign-up, but the company has said that it plans to offer a subscription model in the future.

Vdio will eventually expand to the two dozen or so markets where Rdio operates, with the next one planned being Canada.

Though the app itself is well-designed and easy enough to use, the question now is how many subscription-based services (assuming Vdio goes that route, as they’ve said) can one tolerate paying for? Already Netflix and Amazon are battling for users by targeting families, while Hulu is striking deals and building up an original content collection of its own. Assuming you wanted to stream content from all three, you would start seeing monthly bills which, when combined, begin nearing the cost of cable TV. Most aren’t ready to cut the cord entirely, which means the market for streaming video today is still a luxury of sorts. That may change in time, but the challenge for startups like Vdio is to survive until that’s the case.

If you thought the “ambient location” craze has passed, prepare to be surprised. A company called SocialRadar is announcing today that it has raised $12.75 million in Series A funding from NEA, Grotech Ventures, and others including Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Dave Morin and Kevin Colleran for a mobile, location-based people discovery app arriving first on the iPhone.

What’s notable about the app, besides the fact that it’s arriving at a time when many have written off “people finders” as passé, is that the company’s founder and CEO is Michael Chasen, the former co-founder and CEO of Blackboard, who stepped down from his position at the company in late 2012, following its $1.64 billion exit to Providence Equity Partners in mid-2011.

Blackboard may not be the most beloved learning-management system, but it did establish itself as a leader in the space, which new edtech startups today hope to disrupt. And now, Chasen believes he can push SocialRadar to the top of the “people discovery” heap as well.

“One of the interesting things about Blackboard is that even though we were an enterprise software company, we really considered ourselves to be closer to the consumer,” Chasen explains. “I spent all my time on college campuses dealing with students and faculty to help put courses online.” While there, he noticed several interesting trends. Though only 56 percent of U.S. users have online profiles, on college campuses, it’s almost 95 percent. Smartphone penetration is around 60 percent in the U.S., but on college campuses, it’s over 90 percent, he says.

Not only are the students more likely to carry these devices, they also use them in different ways. “They’re openly using their smartphones as location beacons and sharing their location with other people, as well as sharing their social information,” he says.

But Chasen thought it was strange that although this is now the default behavior (at least within a particular demographic), there isn’t a simple way to just walk into a room, launch an app and find out who’s there and how you’re connected to them.

Of course, that’s not entirely true.

A number of startups including Highlight, Banjo, Sonar, and more have attacked the location-based, people discovery space with gusto over the past couple of years, with the movement really coming to a head at the annual SXSW event in Austin in 2012. Since then, however, many of the apps have struggled to find mainstream adoption. Some, like Glancee and Glassmap have sold. Others, like Kismet, have moved into new product categories. Intro pivoted.

Chasen insists that SocialRadar is different from that lot, though.

“I get that those applications use both location and sharing of information,” he says. One of his favorites in the group is Highlight, which he explains runs in the background and, when you’re near someone it thinks you’re interested in, it will give you an alert. “It is certainly a great app for meeting new people nearby that the Highlight algorithm thinks that you should meet, but it doesn’t give you the power to take out your phone when you walk into a room and see who’s around you,” says Chasen.

Meanwhile, an app like Sonar – which does in fact tell you which of your friends are near you (and how close by) — Chasen describes as just a “straight list of people,” accompanied by others who are friends of friends.

SocialRadar will instead focus on not just who’s nearby, but how you know them. For example, it would show you people who you work with, people you went to college with, and so on, not just names.

But the other big differentiator between SocialRadar and the other apps, which often mine publicly available check-in data to find those nearby connections or have disregarded real privacy concerns, is that SocialRadar is meant to offer users more control. Users can choose to share their location with all others, with friends only, or stay anonymous.

Users can also control how the app is run, choosing whether or not it’s background-enabled. That’s something that addresses one of the major pain points for end users of other location-based people finders like Highlight, which was said to have negative impacts on battery drain.

And SocialRadar will allow for custom alerts, letting you tell it when to bother you with notifications and which people or groups you’re interested in tracking. (E.g. when my best friend is nearby, when a fellow frat brother is in town, when my co-workers are at this event, etc.)

These differences, Chasen claims, will allow SocialRadar to succeed where others have stagnated. “There were hundreds of social networks before Facebook came out,” he says. “A lot of these other apps in the space I consider to be version one, toe-in-the-water. I wouldn’t even necessarily even put them in the same circle of competitors.”

Them’s fighting words.

SocialRadar, now a 10-person team based in Washington, D.C., is announcing its funding today, but the company was only formally founded eight weeks ago. However, the technology has been in development for much longer, Chasen says.

Still, it’s very early days. “We got office space seven or eight weeks ago, and I was literally building chairs in my office three weeks ago,” he says with a laugh. (Side note: at Blackboard, Chasen says they had so many people, he had a division of the company that built office furniture. How things have changed for him now.)

The iPhone version of SocialRadar will arrive in beta in a couple of weeks.

In 10 days, Google’s RSS feed-reading service Google Reader will shut down for good. In its wake, developers working on products in the RSS ecosystem have been stepping up to deliver apps, tools and other services to fill the void. Today, one of the frontrunners, Feedly, is transforming itself from RSS application to RSS platform, with the public debut of Feedly Cloud, the infrastructure that has been powering Feedly’s own apps and those from a small handful of approved developers.

That infrastructure will also now power a new, standalone web version of Feedly (one that doesn’t rely on a browser extension), something that’s been among Feedly users’ top requests.

The company first announced partnerships with RSS app makers Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader earlier this month, all of which are moving to support the Feedly API ahead of the Google Reader shutdown. For end users of those applications, Google Reader often powered the backend of their feed-reading experience, but the front end (the visual interface) was handled by a third party. Now those users can seamlessly transition away from Google Reader dependence, without any extra effort on their part.

Feedly, through its “Normandy” project,” has been working to clone the Reader API, and it’s now running that on Google’s App Engine platform. Today, in addition to Feedly’s own apps for iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari and Firefox, and now web, as well as those select third-party partners listed above, the company is making its backend infrastructure more broadly available. It’s adding new Feedly Cloud partners IFTTT, Sprout Social, gNewsReader for BlackBerry 10 and Symbian/MeeGo, Press, Pure News Widget, and Meneré, in addition to those above, and will onboard others still in the weeks ahead.

Though Feedly once struggled in the shadow of Google Reader, it has emerged in recent weeks as one of the top alternatives for end users in need of a new home for their feeds ahead of Reader’s demise.

On the iPhone, Feedly’s app is currently No. 4 in the News section of the iOS App Store in the U.S., according to rankings from Distimo, and it’s No. 6 on Android. And while its overall ranking in the top charts has been sometimes sporadic, it has consistently stayed at the top of the news section in both stores for several months.

Feedly says it now reaches 12 million users, up from 4 million pre-Reader retirement. Millions of new users have come to the service, and, more importantly, the company says that 68 percent of new users become weekly actives. Maybe 12 million users is a drop in the bucket for a web giant like Google, but for a small startup, these are notable numbers. However, Digg.com is preparing to launch its own RSS reader, too, just before Reader’s shutdown, which could change the current landscape if it’s any good.

Ahead of today’s public launch of Feedly Cloud, Feedly has been processing over 25 million RSS feeds daily, accounting for billions of articles, and has seen over 200 developers getting in touch to request access to the Feedly API.

The new version of Feedly on the web is live now.

Stealing a page right out of a startup called Aggregift’s playbook, Amazon today launched a new feature called “Amazon Birthday Gift,” which allows a group of Facebook friends to go in on an Amazon.com Gift Card together. That gift isn’t posted to the recipients’ Facebook Timeline until their big day arrives.

To get started with the service, a user buys an Amazon.com gift card, then invites other mutual friends to donate using the Birthday Gift website here. When the birthday arrives, the recipient is tagged in a Facebook Timeline wall post, receiving the digital card and everyone’s birthday greetings.

The new addition is a further expansion of Amazon’s deepening integration with Facebook, as the company last December launched a “Friends and Family Gifting” feature just ahead of the holidays to generate Facebook-enabled gift suggestions, send out reminders, and enable gift list sharing via both email and social networks. Online competitor Walmart, too, had previously launched a similar Facebook-based gift recommendation service in 2011, which was added to the Walmart.com site ahead of the 2012 holiday season.

Social gifting is still very much in the experimental phase, despite the support from e-commerce giants like Walmart, Amazon and others. For instance, Facebook has also dabbled in this area with the fall 2012 debut of Facebook Gifts (built on top of former social gifting startup Karma). The service is meant to tie into one of Facebook’s most regular draws — its birthday reminders. The idea is that users could visit the site, and in addition to wishing their friend “happy birthday,” they could also add a gift to accompany that message. The social network offers gifts like iTunes digital Gift Cards and physical goods, and it even launched its own self-branded “Facebook Card” earlier this year.

However, even with Facebook’s broad reach, its Gifts service has been struggling to generate serious revenue, and certainly falling short of earlier projections and estimations regarding its potential. Meanwhile, some startups like Sincerely (with Sesame) and recently funded Wrapp, carry on in this space, while others head off in new directions. Giftly, for instance, exited to GiftCards.com this March, while Boomerang has turned its focus to the B2B market instead in recent months.

That being said, Amazon still has a shot at winning the social gifting space with its new Amazon Birthday Gift feature, since it can be argued that users don’t associate Facebook’s brand with spending or shopping the way they do with Amazon. (See also: various f-commerce struggles). Plus, Amazon’s cards are the go-to for the “generic” gift option, which people buy when they don’t know what to get, or when they need something last minute.

However, the new service is still limited today to smaller gift amounts ($1, $5, $10 and $25), which can be a challenge for those attempting to raise funds for a larger present like an electronics purchase. Plus, being tied only to birthdays eliminates the big holiday, graduation or wedding presents users may want to go in on together. Often these larger presents are led by a close family member or friend who puts in a big chunk of change, to which others pile on. Not supporting these other types of gifting narrows the already potentially narrow market for digital, social gifting even further.

Amazon Birthday Gift is live now here for interested users.

Filepicker.io, the Y Combinator-backed “filesystem as a service,” is today rebranding itself as “Ink File Picker,” a name that, CEO Brett van Zuiden explains, stands for something much larger than the former, more product-focused title. In addition, the company is announcing a $1.8 million seed round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners.

Others in the round included SV Angel, Google board member Ram Shriram, Geoff Ralston (La La Media), Aaron Iba (Y Combinator), Pejman Nozad (Amidzad), Facebook VP of Business Development and Monetization Dan Rose, Ullas Naik (Streamlined Ventures), Hamid Barkhordar, Bobby Yazdani (Saba Software), Niall Browne (Workday), and Data Collective.

Founded just last year, Ink File Picker was created by four MIT grads, Anand Dass, Brett Van Zuiden, Liyan David Chang, and Thomas Georgiou, as a way to make cloud services interoperable. With tools for both web and, as of last summer, mobile developers, the company enables applications to connect to over a dozen of the most popular online services, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Box, GitHub, SkyDrive, Gmail, Instagram and more, as well as to the end user’s computer or device, and elsewhere.

Over the past year, Ink has seen increasing demand for its service, having hit 1 million files in November. Today, it sees just under 400 million files per month (over 10 million files per day). There are also 20,000 applications using the service from around 17,000 developers, including many well-known names like SurveyMonkey, Scribd, Livefyre, Fitocracy, Udacity, Haiku Deck, Crowdtilt, Urbanspoon, PlanGrid, RapGenius, Vidcaster, WeVideo, Funny or Die, TED, and others.

Van Zuiden says that the move to rebrand as “Ink” has to do with the company’s now larger vision, which is no longer just about a product that allows for uploading of files, but is instead more of a file management platform for developers. ”It does everything from connecting to all the 19 sources we work with, doing the image processing, and the further operations people want to do on this content, storing this content, and serving as this whole layer that deals with all the different types of content work that you want to do,” he says.

For example, in the new cloud-based word processor called Draft, Ink lets the app’s users import their files from elsewhere on the web (like Dropbox), then as they’re writing and editing those files, the updated versions are saved back to the service where those files originated.

“It’s sort of this notion of ‘what does a file system for the web look like?,” explains van Zuiden. “What are those APIs, what is that capability?” Originally, the answer to that was a file picker toolset (as the earlier name implied). Today, it’s about “helping applications and services work together,” he says.

With the seed investment, which actually closed back in September, the company has grown its team from four to eight and plans to reach 15 by next year. It will also continue its product development, with a specific focus on investing more resources on mobile, which has its own set of challenges.

On mobile, release cycles are different from the web, screen sizes are smaller impacting the user interface design, plus versioning is an important area to address. Longer-term, the startup plans to focus on the international market as well, in terms of not only localization, but also the services popular in other regions worldwide, as determined by customer demand.

Today, Ink File Picker offers a freemium platform where pricing is based on the number of files handled per month. Under 5,000 files is free, and a Pro plan for $99/month offers up to 50,000 files per month. Enterprise customers have custom pricing available. Around 5 to 10 percent of Ink’s customer base is on a paid plan, van Zuiden estimates.

The newly rebranded Ink website and Ink File Picker are now live for interested developers.

Following a bit of backlash arising from the loss of popular Viacom-owned children’s TV shows, Netflix today launched Netflix Families, which is essentially just a destination website designed to tout Netflix’s family fare. The site includes rows of Netflix recommendations for parents and kids, as well as tips on how to stream and other promotional content.

Amazon, not to be left unmentioned in today’s news, countered with an announcement of its own.

These moves come at a time when the war for streaming is heating up between Netflix and up-and-coming rival Amazon Prime Instant Video. Earlier this month, Amazon picked up the Viacom shows Netflix lost, including big-name kids’ TV brands like Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go!, SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue’s Clues and several others.

Parents had earlier stormed Netflix’s consumer support site to complain about the losses, having already been burned by other ill-fated moves from the company in the past (like that Qwikster fiasco which became the symbol of Netflix “not listening,” CEO Reed Hastings once said.)

In addition to the new Families site, just yesterday Netflix also announced its largest original content deal to date with DreamWorks Animation, home to brands like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. The deal involves some of DreamWorks Animation’s characters moving into TV (Shrek, most likely), in a branded collection of shows that will comprise more than 300 hours of new programming. The company also recently scored a content deal for other kids’ TV like “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” from Disney.

These titles, and more, will now be promoted on the Netflix Families website.

Not to be outdone, Amazon is also heading off this morning’s launch of the Netflix Families website with news of its own: the company released a progress report on Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, its optional service designed for parents with kids ages 3-8 which offers a variety of books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows that play on Amazon Kindle Fire devices.

While FreeTime offers parental controls, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is a paid add-on ($2.99 per child or $6.99 per family) which Amazon today says now combines over a thousand books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows, including Disney’s “Where’s My Mickey?”, Warner Brother’s “LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4″, “Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” from Oceanhouse Media, “Plants vs. Zombies” by EA, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s “Curious George at the Zoo”.

Also added to FreeTime Unlimited? Yes, several Nick Jr. favorites – the recently acquired Viacom shows Netflix lost.

Other new arrivals include “Scribblenauts Remix” from Warner Bros., Disney’s “Puffle Launch” and “Toy Story Smash It! Classic”, EA titles like “Tetris”, “Bejeweled 2″, “Monopoly Millionaire” and “The Game of Life”, apps like “Curious George at the Zoo”, “The Berenstain Bears and the Big Spelling Bee”, “Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter and Triceratops Gets Lost from the Smithsonian Institution”, and more. (It’s a decent B-list of kids’ titles, for those without rugrats around to inform you).

Neither Amazon nor Netflix’s announcement today is the equivalent of what one would call major news, of course. One is a destination site to educate and promote Netflix’s children’s programming, while the other is an update on what’s available with Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.

What is interesting about the news is that both companies seemed to have decided that where the children go, so go the parents. The war for streaming is resting on families’ youngest members – a generation of viewers who have born into a world where tablets already exist, and who can navigate their way around the devices better than their parents in many cases. It’s these little ones the streaming giants will now be catering to.

Paying for a streaming video service on top of other in-home entertainment bills like cable TV and high-speed internet is still a luxury add-on for most families in a down economy like ours, and that means either Netflix or Amazon will win customers family by family, instead of counting on families to sign up for both. It’s also the same reason why other streaming video services, like Redbox Instant for example, have trouble getting off the ground.

Expect this battle to continue to heat up later this summer as well, when Netflix finally reveals its long-awaited user profiles, which will give kids and parents their own window into Netflix content, personalized recommendations, and more. And if Netflix is smart about things, hopefully it will also introduce parental controls and other Kindle FreeTime-like features, too.

Apple has now taken another step to push app publishers to use its preferred ad tracking option, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), with the debut of the iOS 7 beta. Confirming what many have suspected, Apple is eliminating an alternative option involving tracking by MAC addresses. This method had sprung up following a change to Apple’s Developer Documentation in 2011, announcing its intention to end developers’ reliance on the unique identifier known as the UDID.

It’s been a long time since Apple announced it would begin phasing out developer access to the UDID on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad – something which at first led to some confusion in the industry. Over the years, developers had learned to use the identifier for advertising purposes, and as a way to store data about their users. But the method raised privacy concerns, since the number is tied to each individual device and cannot be removed, cleared, or controlled by end users.

Several alternatives soon appeared in the UDID’s place, each hoping to become the new default method. Many developers still use some these – or just as likely, a combination of some these – today.

Earlier this year, Apple began signaling again that the alternative it had in mind for the post-UDID world was its own when it began rejecting apps using cookie-tracking methods. Then in March, the company announced that it would no longer accept new applications or app updates that access UDIDs as of May 1, 2013.

With that deadline now behind us, Apple is again pushing its community to the UDID’s more privacy conscious replacement, the IDFA. This Apple-approved method provides the attribution advertisers need, along with the privacy and security controls Apple wants to provide for its users.

According to data collected by mobile app marketing firm Fiksu, which helps app publishers with user acquisition efforts, iOS 7 devices – all beta testers, at this point – are always now returning a MAC address of 02:00:00:00:00:00. This “dummy” address is the equivalent of the phone number 555-1212, for example. It began showing up for the tens of thousands of unique iOS 7 devices in Fiksu’s logs earlier this week, says Craig Palli, Fiksu’s mobile app marketing technology platform head.

There is also a mention in the pre-release notes for iOS 7 distributed to developers which states that this single, meaningless MAC address is now the new expected behavior.

“The MAC address, a hardware based identifier, has long been a way for advertisers to have a permanent, unique identifier for each device, providing a stable tracking option as an alternative to the controversy-plagued UDID,” Palli explains. “However, the same privacy concerns raised about the UDID apply equally to the MAC address – it just received less publicity,” he adds. Now, for those who haven’t yet made the switch to IDFA, the window to migrate is closing.

That being said, Palli says that most publishers and ad networks generally knew that the MAC method would not be supported, and the amount of traffic addressed by MAC addresses had “rapidly diminished” in recent months. Today, it exists as a very small, single-digit percentage, he tells us. Other methods, including digital fingerprinting and to a lesser extent, HTML5 cookies, are also still in use today, both with their own strengths and weaknesses.

At this time, there have not yet been any reports of app rejections because of the MAC address method being used, though, as noted above, the cookie-tracking method had seen some rejections earlier this year.

The app publisher and advertiser communities have had a long time to prepare for UDID’s demise and the shift to the IDFA. And while that hasn’t been an entirely error-free process, the time has now come to finalize the move.

“Fortunately, as an ecosystem, we’ve transitioned to the IDFA,” says Palli, “so by the time iOS 7 rolls out it should make little to no difference from an app developer or marketer’s point of view.”

Many of the children’s e-book applications for iPad today use a combination of animations, video or even games to make books more “interactive” for their young readers. Me Books, a London-based digital e-book app and retailer launching today in the U.S., has a slightly different take. Instead of animation, the app uses audio to add an additional element to stories. The e-books are narrated, and include artwork that kids can tap to hear characters speak, too. In addition, readers (or their parents) can also record their own voices over the default narration to customize the experience even further.

Me Books is the latest creation to ship from the team at Made in Me, a studio originally founded back in 2009 by former visual effects artists James Huggins and his brother-in-law Mike Outlaw. In the pre-tablet era, the company had produced a series of desktop applications under the “Land of Me” brand, which allowed children to swap out the words in the story to change what happens within the interactive world of “Land of Me.”

That experience was later ported over to iOS, but co-founder Huggins admits that it never really took off. The app reached around 75,000 downloads versus the desktop version’s approximately quarter of a million.

So the company turned its focus in a new direction, and began to work on Me Books. But instead of thinking up new ways to change the content within the e-books themselves, Huggins and team focused on changing the overall experience, especially the audio, which he says is an under-utilized area.

“It’s a very deliberate stance against taking – not new forms of storytelling, but taking physical books that we know – to the digital space in a way that respects the experience of reading a book,” Huggins explains.

The free app has been available in the U.K. since October where it’s been averaging 1,000 downloads per day and has now reached over 110,000 as of April. Today, it’s available worldwide, including here in the U.S.

Me Books ships with one title for free, then other books can be purchased for $2.99 (USD) within the app. Unlike some book apps where a large number of titles come from the public domain, Me Books’ titles come from publishers like Penguin, Harper Collins, Scholastic, Macmillan, Hachette, Puffin, Bloomsbury, and others.

“[The selection] is heavily curated, really diverse, but it’s never going to be exhaustive or comprehensive. It’s going to be numbering in the hundreds of books, rather than the thousands, but it will be a really good cross-section of books for children,” Huggins says. The app will include both classics and modern titles, as well as TV tie-ins.

Today, U.K. users have around 130 titles to choose from, while U.S. readers have 80 to 90 at launch.

However, the title selection and narration is still “very British” right now, says Huggins. And while that might work for something like “Peter Rabbit,” U.S. users who prefer a more American feel may want to wait for the forthcoming U.S.-based publishers and brands which will arrive in the app over the next couple of months, he suggests. (Or they can swap out the default narration for their own).

The company splits the revenue it earns with publishers 50/50 (after Apple’s take), and the app itself is free.

Based in London, the ten-person team had raised angel funding for “Land of Me” years ago, and raised from the same angels another small amount to get “Me Books” off the ground, but is preparing to raise a larger round in the near future.

U.S. users can now download the new app from here.

Lisa Frank. Dayglo Barbie. Rainbow unicorn. Fisher Price. A mess, trouble, confusing. Marketing department. What are, “words used to describe the iOS 7 redesign,” Alex? Now that the Apple keynote beer goggles have worn off, the polarizing makeover of Apple’s iOS 7 operating system is starting to sink in. Surely, this is not it? This is not done, right?

Given its “beta” label – which Apple actually uses correctly – there’s a good chance that many of our quibbles with the disjointed OS will be fixed by the time of its public release later this fall. But one of the most upsetting things about the makeover is unfortunately one of the most visible: the icons. They’re inconsistent, they seem rushed, and in some cases, they’re just downright ugly.

Apple has billions of dollars in cash just sitting around, and it couldn’t buy itself a set of nice-looking icons?

And don’t give me that “they only had eight months” crap. I know plenty of people who would forgo eating, sleeping and sunlight for less than even a single billion to pump out better icons than this in that same time frame.

Well, Apple’s misstep is Dribbble.com’s gain. The online community for designers is having a moment as its users try to fix all Apple’s mistakes. And some of these third-party makeovers are actually quite good, too.

Above: Apple’s version is on the right.

One, in fact, is now becoming one of the most-viewed images on the site. Ever. The iOS 7 redesign here, created by 20-year old UI/UX designer Leo Drapeau has, as of today, reached over 97,000 views.

Drapeau, who’s currently living in Paris and is pursuing his Bachelor’s in Web Design at a school called EEMI, says he made his version of the redesign in a few hours.

“I was following the WWDC keynote, and I was really excited about the overall UX and UI changes and evolutions in iOS 7, but the icons of the homescreen bugged me,” he explains. “So, I just wanted to refined them a little, to make them cleaner and more harmonized, but not to reinvent the whole design.”

Drapeau downplays his work, humbly adding, “there’s really nothing revolutionary about this post. I think it just got popular because it was one of the first redesigns on the site.” However, Dribbble.com’s co-founder Rich Thornett tells us that Drapeau’s image here is the second-most viewed attachment the Dribbble.com website has ever had. Meanwhile, another in the set is currently the third-most viewed shot ever, and just a couple hundred views from reaching #2.

The student designer’s work has clearly struck a chord. The set of iOS 7 images now has ten pages and hundreds of comments, most of them positive and some offering tips as to how the design could be improved a bit further with minor tweaks.

Overheard at TechCrunch while clicking through Drapeau’s work: “I didn’t realize how much I missed the drop shadows.”

And on Dribble.com: “nice,” “better,” “bravo,” and “perfect!”

Drapeau says he’s been making little updates based on some of the remarks  - for example, with the third version of the redesign, he modified the Compass icon entirely, bringing it closer to the real one.

Since then, he has also uploaded a final update, with all the previous changes and other improvements to the Clock, Stock, Compass, and Mail icons, and also added a Dark mode and Light mode, depending on the wallpaper you use.

(You can see an earlier version of the design above, and the newer one with the more Apple-like Compass beneath it).

Since the post, Drapeau says he’s received several work inquiries, mainly from individuals and startups, both French and American, as well as internships and job offers from bigger companies. But he’s continuing with his schooling and side projects for now.

iOS 7 isn’t all bad by any means, though it has a number of issues to address between the beta and the release. Many of those are under-the-hood changes, however, or less obvious quirks like the confusing lockscreen arrow or that you have to swipe emails right to left to delete, for example. But the homescreen icons – the imagery that everyone can relate to, designer or not – should have been given more attention before being trotted out on stage as the next big thing.

This is not Apple perfection. We expect more.

Image credits, obviously: Leo Drapeau

Foursquare this morning has launched a pretty new visualization feature called Foursquare Time Machine, which offers a new way to view a history of your check-ins on an interactive map. And oh, it’s also an advertisement for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone. Hey, look, Foursquare is trying to make some money by using your data! How clever!

The company has long since allowed users to delve into their check-in history through a searchable timeline it offers on the Foursquare.com website. And while the new Time Machine offers a briefly fun diversion for bored office workers looking for a little escapism, there’s not much value to it as a real product feature that you would return to again and again, following your first, more curious exploration.

As the Foursquare blog post explains, Time Machine lets users view their history and “zoom through time and space” to visualize your check-ins and “discover all the places you should head to next.” On that latter point, it appears to be referring to the images at the bottom of the Time Machine page which suggest other venues near your top check-in spots, which you can click on and save for later if you choose.

Users can also compile and then share their stats as a custom infographic to networks like Facebook and Twitter, which it seems many are excited to do.

But all this is really just a front to allow Foursquare to show you (and generate some revenue from) a large Samsung Galaxy S4 ad. The site is branded on the left side and on the top right (upon first launch), and, after clicking “fetch my history,” the middle of the Time Machine’s top navigation teases “The Next Big Thing.” As that experience loads, Samsung Galaxy S4′s branding shows yet again. There is literally nowhere on this micro-site where you can’t see the word “Samsung.” To be clear, this is not a Foursquare product or feature, this is only an ad.

The company has been busy in recent weeks beefing up its online experience at Foursquare.com in an effort to get more users to consider visiting its site on the web where it could monetize better through ads. This is tough, since Foursquare is still generally known as a mobile check-in app, and not the Yelp alternative it now wants to become. In addition, Foursquare has been opening up its platform to more businesses and advertisers, striking deals with the major credit card companies for member discounts, bumping up its sales force, and more, all in an effort to finally make some money. And it has bought itself a little more time to figure things out, too, thanks to its recent $41 million round, closed this spring.

It’s a timely move for Samsung as well, as the branded Time Machine experience comes on the heels of a recent Reuters report stating that Galaxy S4 sales were going to disappoint. Brokerages downgraded Samsung, citing weakening profit growth for the company. Though the S4 became the fastest-selling smartphone since its launch in late April, that momentum has now slowed, leading Samsung to a need for bigger and more creative ads.

You know, just like this.

At the SourceDigital13 conference this morning, Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf offered a look into how mobile users on iOS are spending their time in apps, as well as the differences between men and women’s app usage, and trends particular to advertisers’ favorite demographic (those aged 25 to 34), the latter which led to some surprises.

Flurry, whose analytics offering for mobile developers has allowed the company to gain broad insight into mobile user behaviors, has seen its network grow to over 300,000 apps and three billion app sessions per day over the past five-plus years, says Khalaf, which allows it to track trends across more than a billion mobile consumers worldwide.

During the month of May 2013, the company took a random sample of its data to gain insight in a number of areas, one being a look at what time of day apps are used the most. Flurry found that app usage steadily grows over the course of the day, and peaks in the evening – something that again the company positioned against TV viewing behavior, noting that TV viewing peaks strongly in the evening, while apps are used all day.

The company had previously said in December that the time spent in mobile apps was starting to challenge television, for example, but today notes that for ad-buying purposes, there’s more to consider than just total hours spent. Ad spend in apps can be effectively spread throughout the day, Khalaf says, because consumers are on their mobiles consistently, despite the evening peak.

Though the above usage data is fairly common sense, a deeper look into trends among the highly-desired young adult (25-34) demographic led to a few surprises.

Probably the biggest finding is that this group under-indexes on mobile games, as compared with the rest of the mobile population.

“Given the popularity of game apps you might expect that Millennials drive that usage,” explains Khalaf, “but in fact they under-index for game app usage. It turns out that it’s the middle-aged Gen X-ers who grew up with gaming consoles who are over indexing on games.”

Go figure.

This group also under-indexed on time spent in Utilities and News, while over-indexing in Sports, Health and Fitness, Music, Media and Entertainment, Lifestyle and Shopping. In other words, they have a healthy appetite for apps and content in general, just oddly not as much for mobile games. (That’s not to say that games aren’t popular with this group, they’re just less so than other categories compared with other demographics.)

In particular, it’s females ages 25 to 34 who dramatically over-index in the Sports, Health and Fitness category, spending over 200 percent more time in these apps than the rest of the population because of what appears to be a greater interest in self-improvement (or at least, using apps to help them with that goal). They also – stereotypically – turn towards Lifestyle and Shopping apps more so than men, where they spend 75 percent more time than the rest of the population.

Males, meanwhile, over-index in Music, Media and Entertainment, as well as Social and Photo-Sharing, while under-indexing in News & Magazines.

Image credits: charts – Flurry; iPhone - Hello

Update: clarified headline, which could have confused some into thinking games are not popular. 

Fancy, the one-time Pinterest competitor that has long since set its sights on social e-commerce, is expanding  today with the launch of its internationalization efforts. The company is now making its service available in 30 languages and is shipping its products worldwide.

Going forward, Fancy will automatically detect which language to use based on browser settings or device settings. However, web users will also be able to go into the Preferences menu at the top of the screen on the desktop site and change that selection if they choose.

According to Fancy COO Michael Silverman, the company is also handling logistics and customer service locally. He explains that Fancy had been seeing a lot of demand from non U.S. audiences, which is what prompted these changes.

“Just over 50 percent of our users are domestic and the other half is international – including Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” says Silverman. “Outside of the U.S., there are a bunch of young shoppers on mobile devices who want to shop this way…and we are the only ones doing this.”

That statement could be misinterpreted to mean that young, international shoppers want to buy products using their mobile phone and Fancy is the only social shopping site available to them. That’s not true, of course. What is true is that many of the top competitors in this social shopping market – product discovery sites like Polyvore, Wanelo, or eBay-owned Svpply, for example – link out to other e-commerce sites on the internet, which is not always an ideal experience.

The resulting link may be dead, the product may be sold out, or you find that the company doesn’t ship to your country (or charges so much for international shipping, that you wouldn’t want to bother). On Fancy, users are buying directly from its own website and checkout directly there, too.

That being said, Fancy still has some tough competition.

In the U.S., its iPhone app is ranked #237 in the “Lifestyle” section, behind eBay Fashion (#130), Polyvore (#47) and Wanelo (#18), as well as hot, young adult e-commerce stores like ModCloth (#108), and brick-and-mortars gone mobile like American Eagle (#95) or Nordstrom (#94). However, it is a bit ahead of Pose (#305) and Svpply (#389).

And a quick (non-scientific) look at its web traffic shows similar trends in terms of stateside competition, at least. It’s closely tied with Wanelo, for example, which now has over 8 million registered users according to its website.

Officially, Silverman says Fancy has over 7 million registered users worldwide and 12 million uniques across all platforms (web and mobile) as of last month.

(Note that Fancy had until recently been thefancy.com. It now redirects to Fancy.com, but there’s no data on that URL.)

It makes sense that Fancy would try to shift its battle to the world’s stage instead, by focusing on growing its footprint in other areas where competition may not be as fierce.

The company has been experimenting in other directions as well. Earlier this year, it acquired Samplrs.com, an artisanal foods seller, which Fancy used to beef up its Fancy box subscription service. As for all those acquisition rumors we keep hearing (with unsubstantiated reports ranging from Apple to Yahoo), Silverman says only “I don’t know why you are hearing that, it’s not something that is coming up in discussion over here.” Hmm.

Google took swift action to ban Google Glass applications with facial recognition capabilities recently, following the launch of an API which would have allowed developers to build apps that could identify the faces of people who a Glass wearer encountered. Today, however, another company called Orbeus is launching its own face and scene detection API platform ReKognition for Glass, which sidesteps the privacy issues at hand, as it’s unable to detect someone’s identity.

Instead, ReKognition can tell if something is a face or not, or if it’s male or female, it can detect emotion, and to some extent, it can even tell how beautiful someone is. (On that latter point, the API has been trained somewhat subjectively by feeding it a series of celebrity photos to define the universal standard of beauty. Those who prefer a specific look may disagree.)

Though the company can’t reveal its customers by name due to privacy agreements, one is an Asia dating site which checks to verify that users’ profile photos are of men and women, as opposed to other things like a dog or flower, for example. The site also uses the beauty and gender identification capabilities to help it with its own matchmaking algorithms.

Another use case for ReKognition comes from the advertising industry, where a small handful of customers have been building prototype digital, interactive signage which adapts the ad displayed to the customer looking at it. Yes, it’s very “Minority Report” – by knowing the viewer’s gender and age range, these real-world ads can be more narrowly and granularly targeted, as they are online.

Now, with ReKognition for Glass (or ReKoGlass, as it’s being called), the company is making its computer vision capabilities available to those building apps for Google’s new wearable technology.

“Our API actually offers different face detection, face reading and scene understanding, so we’re not just a facial recognition company,” says Orbeus CEO Ning Xu, explaining that ReKognition doesn’t violate Google’s updated Glass policies. “But even without facial recognition, we can do a lot of things with your face, without revealing your identity.”

The company’s website offers some ideas, like taking attendance in the classroom or determining how many in an audience are male or female, for example. Of course, for many of these use cases, it would be more practical if images could be processed and analyzed in real-time. This is not something that’s possible today with Glass, which doesn’t yet permit direct developer access to the camera, however.

But Xu thinks that will change in time. “I believe – and our team believes – this is a temporary issue, and they’re definitely going to improve that part on Google’s side,” he says. “That’s what we’re offering this API now.”

The Mountain View-based startup was founded by former Bostonians Meng Wang and Tianqiang Liu, and Xu later joined as CEO. The team took the company through Chicago’s Excelerate Labs (now TechStars Chicago) before relocating to Google’s backyard. Orbeus launched its API to the public last August, and has grown its customer base to over 1,000, a small percentage of which are now paying. Today, Orbeus sees over 3 million API calls for its freemium product, which is priced affordably in order to encourage sign-ups, with 40,000 free API calls (500 per day) available for free.

Xu explains that in addition to its tiered service, the company also sells to enterprise customers, and is now in the process of closing a deal with a photo album provider who will use ReKognition to group photos by faces to make the process of building a photo book easier for end users.

As for how many will sign up to try ReKognition for Glass, he’s less sure.

The startup is currently in the process of closing on $1.1 million in seed funding in a round led by ZhenFund (a super angel fund from China), and CRCM Opportunity Fund. The round should be closed by Friday.

Interested Glass developers can now download the new ReKoGlass SDK here for free.

Running a website not optimized for smartphones? Guess what, you’ve been put on notice. Google is using its influence and the power of its algorithm to finally force web publishers to fix their mobile website configuration issues, or risk getting downranked in Google Search. Directing smartphone users to 404′s? You lose. Sending smartphone users looking for specific content to some generic mobile homepage? See ya. Using Flash for your video embeds on mobile? Farewell.

Thank you, Google overlords.

Now normally, a Google SEO change is worth taking a critical eye to, to make sure that Google isn’t somehow penalizing websites unfairly or favoring its own web properties as a result, for example. But this particular change will greatly impact me, as a heavy mobile user who surfs the web constantly on smartphones so…um…well… screw you guys who didn’t get on board with this whole mobile “trend” thing, OK?

The company disclosed its plans in more detail earlier this week, noting that it will “roll out several ranking changes in the near future” that would affect sites not optimized for smartphones, while explaining “smartphone users are a significant and fast growing segment,” and Google wants them to “experience the full richness of the web.”

(Translation: people actually want to use the web on their smartphones, dummies.)

Google’s news mostly flew under the radar as most tech news sites – TechCrunch included – fawned over the reveal of iOS 7, though it could ultimately have a much greater effect on the tech world as a whole. Only some people use iPhones, but everyone* surfs the web.

And Google’s influence when it comes to the web is massive. In the U.S., the company has 66.5 percent of search market share, with the next nearest competitor Microsoft/Bing at just 17.3 percent as of this April, according to comScore. Worldwide, Google’s search footprint on both desktop and mobile is even larger, with an 83.18 percent share on the former, and an 81.02 percent share on the latter, per NetMarketShare’s numbers.

According to its new directives, which Google more casually referred to as “common mistakes,” desktop pages which redirect smartphone users to irrelevant pages on the smartphone website (often just the smartphone homepage), will be among those penalized by the ranking changes.

If you’ve at all used the web on your smartphone, then you’re all too familiar with this frustrating experience – you do a search, tap on a result for an article you want to read, then end up staring confusingly at the site’s mobile-web optimized homepage. Where is the content you wanted? Who knows!

It’s a huge waste of time and bandwidth to have to deal with pages like this when surfing on a smartphone, and Google is now going to make sure that sites like that no longer get top placement.

Google also listed a number of smartphone-only errors website owners should look out for, including desktop pages that redirect to 404′s instead of the smartphone-friendly page (or the desktop page if a smartphone page is not available), incorrect handling of the Googlebot-Mobile, and more. But the recommendation which stuck out was the one which stated that sites should not embed video that doesn’t play on smartphones.

And with this tip, Google quietly served the final death-blow to Adobe Flash, too, saying:

Many websites embed videos in a way that works well on desktops but is unplayable on smartphone devices. For example, if content requires Adobe Flash, it won’t be playable on an iPhone or on Android versions 4.1 and higher.

It’s a notable direction for a company which once embraced the Flash format for its Android platform, and had partnered with Adobe to bake Flash into its own web browser Chrome, even as former Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the world just what he thought of Flash, and none too kindly at that. Google finally gave up the fight for Flash on mobile in recent months, given that Adobe, too, had turned its business away from Flash and toward building HTML5-based tools and applications instead.

Flash, long since banished on iOS, unsupported on Android 4.1 and higher, and dropped by game development engines like Unity, needs to stop powering video embeds, too. At least on mobile.

How long do website owners have to make the changes Google suggests? The company doesn’t say, only hinting that they’ll come in the “near future.” (Arguably, these companies have had years to start caring about mobile, so let’s not shed any tears for them.)

Now, if Google could only do something about those ridiculous websites that push you to download their mobile app when you just want to read their content. Yes, Quora, I’m looking at you.

* Everyone meaning anyone with access to it who has also has access to a supported device. Not like literally every human being in the entire world. 

Image credit: comic, XKCD

The re-commerce sector just got another vote of confidence, this time from billionaire fashion mogul J. Christopher Burch, who along with a couple of angels have put in $600,000 in seed funding into the online women’s clothing consignment shop Bib + Tuck. The service, first launched in November 2012, attempts to bridge the gap between  high-end luxury marketplaces and those that appeal to “fast fashion” consumers like Poshmark or Threadflip, for example.

The two founders, Sari Azout and Sari Bibliowicz (who yes, go by “Sari A.” and “Sari B.”), have had the idea for some time and were experimenting with early models of the service as far back as 2011 when Vogue spotted their work. However, the site itself only launched in November 2012.

Both longtime friends and fellow New York-based, self-described “shopaholics,” the women built Bib + Tuck because it was something they wanted for themselves as young professionals (Sari A. was a bonds trader, Sari B. worked at Gilt) who didn’t have a lot of money to spend on fashion.

“We really fell in love with this concept of shopping without spending, and shopping your best friend’s closet.” explains Azout. “We never anticipated building what is today Bib + Tuck from that,” she admits.

The “shopping without spending” concept Azout is referring to is the site’s built-in almost game-like experience where users sell items in exchange for virtual currency called “bucks,” which they can then spend on the other items for sale. Bib + Tuck doesn’t charge any membership fees, listing fees, or transaction fees, but rather sells the virtual “bucks ($1.00 = 1 buck) to members. That way, even those without items to sell can still shop, while others can purchase the bucks they need to make up for the difference between the fashion they want and the bucks they have on hand.

In addition to shopping members’ closets, Bib + Tuck also offers editorially selected “featured closets” from notable industry names, whose items are sold via a concierge service.

Since November’s launch, the invite-only service has grown to over 12,000 members and around the same number of items, and it has seen over 3,000 transactions to date. The founders declined to disclose their revenues, but did say that already Bib + Tuck’s repeat business is high – over 60 percent of customers have returned for a second purchase. In addition, the current sell-through rate is 20 percent.

Bibliowicz attributes the “stickiness” of the site to its use of virtual credits. “We’ve been called the first gaming platform in the fashion space,” she says. “On the platform, it’s all about giving and taking, and it becomes very addicting to people to be able to shop without using any money. Once someone puts something up and sell it, they obviously can’t cash out because that’s not an option, so they’re hooked in and they feel like they’re getting free clothes,” Bibliowicz explains.

The site’s name – “Bib + Tuck” – refers to this give and take as well, the “bib” being the listing aspect and “tuck” for the sale.

The founders say they decided to keep the seed round small on purpose, as they still want to prove the concept before raising more. Burch invested from his personal account, though his investment arm Burch Creative Capital has dabbled in tech and startups before, with investments in Bump.com, dining guide Ness and more, according to the firm’s website.

“Chris Burch understood our brand from day one – he knew we were going very deep into a specific demographic,” says Azout.

Now a team of six full-time with staff in New York and Miami, Bib + Tuck is preparing to drop the invite-only model later this summer, and open up more broadly to the public. The company will also start enforcing policies over brands it allows at that time – today, it’s a mix of high and low, with 40 percent of the site being designer labels, 20 percent vintage and the rest a mix of emerging designers. Currently, the site features brands like Alexander Wang, rag & bone, Reformation, Wildfox and others.

The company will also then launch an iPhone app, which Azout describes as having an “Instagram feel” and offering a one-click checkout.

For now, however, interested shoppers can request an invite here.

Online fashion consignment is a crowded space, with a number of newer competitors like The RealReal, Poshmark, Threadflip, Twice, Material Wrld, ThreadUP and more, with similar ideas about shopping others’ closets. But, explains Azout, “a lot of the re-commerce companies out there are just services. We’re really trying to make ourselves a voice and connect with our customers.”

Apple revealed a number of notable new features with the debut of iOS 7 yesterday, but there are many smaller features that are now leaking out as developers have had a chance to play around with the new operating system. Though most of these didn’t get a shout-out during Apple’s keynote and accompanying demo at WWDC, they are the “little touches,” which help to make iOS 7 something bigger than an incremental update in terms of the new functionality it introduces.

There are hundreds of new features, tweaks and changes in any operating system update, but below are some of best “little” features in the new release, many of which have been flying under the radar.

Passbook Gets A QR Code Scanner

Apple’s pseudo mobile wallet Passbook, which previously offered a way for users to store their tickets, store cards, and coupons now has another new feature that makes it more utilitarian: a QR code scanner. Spotted in press shots on Apple.com by iMore, the apparent intention here would be to offer another way for users to load new passes onto their iPhones, as opposed to scanning just any QR code found in the wild.

Compass App Becomes A Level, Too

The compass app, like all the other Apple default applications, received a minimalist makeover with a new design. But the compass also got a level feature, too. It now uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to detect how many degrees off of zero a surface is. The feature is accessed by swiping left from the Compass’s main screen. Nifty, but I’m also thankful that Apple did not launch “Level” as a standalone application. (source: CultofMac)

Live Icons…Well, At Least One

With a nod to Windows Phone (!!!)’s concept of live tiles and Android’s widgets, Apple has taken its first baby step towards offering a more real-time interface to its homescreen with the smallest of changes: a live icon for the iOS 7 clock app. Before, this app’s icon was static, but now the app shows the correct time and even includes a second hand that moves. (You can see this in the Apple iOS video here and the unofficial one below).

New App Store Kids Section Groups Apps By Age Ranges

OK, this one did get a brief shout-out during the keynote, but it’s worth a mention. Though most will see this as a minor enhancement, this will actually be huge for parents. In the revamped iOS App Store, apps for children finally gets its own top-level category. (Before, the majority of kids’ apps were found in the “Education” section if remotely instructional, or tucked under the “Games” category if mainly entertaining.)

With the introduction of the Kids section (above screenshot from iDownloadBlog), there’s an opportunity for parents – and their offspring – to better drill down to find those that are appropriate based on the child’s age. And, as The Guardian points out, this also sets up a structure where Apple could begin to enforce specific rules about apps based on those more granular age designations (e.g. no in-app purchases on ages X to Y, guidance on analytics and how in-app ads are used, etc.).

Black & White Mode

Because iOS 7 now uses transparent overlays for things like the Control Center (easy-access Settings you get to by swiping up from the bottom of the screen), the OS will use either black or white for app labels and the icons on the overlay, as appropriate. As iFans notes, the default wallpaper that ships with iOS 7 will serve up the black version, but the white version was demoed during the keynote.

FaceTime Gets Its Own App, Now Does Audio Calls

Previously, iPhone users could access FaceTime from either the Phone app or Contacts app, but now Apple’s voice calling service has its own dedicated app – just like it does on the iPod touch. More importantly, however, the app now supports audio calls in addition to audio plus video. No wonder carriers like AT&T didn’t want to support FaceTime, right?

Live & Panoramic Wallpaper

A concept popularized by Android is the idea of a “live” wallpaper – that is, instead of a static, unmoving image for your background, the wallpaper is animated, often subtly so. Apple’s iOS 7 now ships with at least two live wallpapers, and hopefully this will open up the OS to run third-party live wallpapers, as well. (See around 0:30 in the YouTube video below for a demo).

However, even for those who choose to use a static wallpaper as their background, as you tilt your phone the wallpaper stays with you. In addition, panoramic photos can also be used for wallpaper.

Turn-By-Turn Walking Directions in Maps (& More)

Great for city dwellers, or anyone else who would rather be steered by audio instead of having to peer down at their phone while trying to find their way around, Apple’s Maps app has been updated to offer turn-by-turn navigation for walking, in addition to driving. It also includes inclinometer support so it knows when you’re heading up or down hills, too, and a night mode will kick in when the sun sets.

Access Notifications On The Lock Screen

A minor but ongoing frustration with iOS’s earlier implementation of the Notification Center is that it required you to first slide to unlock your device. That made no sense of course, as often the purpose of notifications is a quick check of what you may have missed – and Apple had required you take an extra step to accomplish this before. Now, you can simply pull down the revamped Notification Center from the Lock Screen. And with the redesign, it appears it will be easier to tap that “Clear” button when you’ve completed your review and want to dismiss the items.

Unlimited Tabs In Safari

Safari’s revamp puts it more on par with something like Google’s Chrome app, with its new interface, improved bookmarks and sync, and more, but one of the biggest pain points has also now been addressed, too: no more limits on the number of tabs you have open. For heavy readers and web surfers, this was one of those minor but annoying issues that eventually forced us to other browsers, so it’s good to see it addressed.

Finding App Data Hogs Is Easier

A way to see which apps are eating into your cellular bandwidth is now found in the iOS 7 Settings, according to MacRumors. This is the kind of feature that third-party applications like Onavo have provided in the past to data-conscious users. iOS 7 only offers the bare details, though, while Onavo offers tools to keep data usage down, as well.

Spotlight Search

The search function is no longer available to the left of the homescreen, but is rather accessed by swiping down from the center of the screen. MacRumors also discovered that you can now configure which search results categories display including things like iCloud documents, iTunes, Passbook updates, Reading List and more.

Twitter Music Gets Its Own Station

Twitter’s good relationship with Apple now sees the app’s new Twitter Music service integrated right into iTunes Radio. Spotted in screen shots on Apple.com, Twitter Music’s “Trending” section is available as its own station within Apple’s streaming music service.

Put Newsstand In A Folder

The app everyone loves to complain about, Newsstand, had been stuck on Apple’s homescreen forever, refusing to bend to your own ideas about app categorization. Fear no more says CultofMac, you can finally shove that thing in a folder. (Which is good, too, because I’m not so sure about that icon!)

Tencent Weibo Integration

A significant new feature that speaks to Apple’s focus on gaining traction in China is the addition of Tencent Weibo, a microblogging site that’s like China’s version of Twitter. Tencent Weibo’s competitor, Sina Weibo, was integrated into iOS 6 last year.

Call And Message Blocking

As reported earlier, the new version of the iOS operating system now offers “Phone, FaceTime and Messages blocking,” allowing users to prevent specific people from being able to contact you.

Image credits: Apple.com; all other images have been linked to in the paragraph above the feature being referenced, please credit appropriately. 

Apple is no longer offering the “Genius” feature as a way to surface and discover new mobile applications in the iOS App Store in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7. Instead, the spot that used to belong to “Genius” now goes to “Near Me,” a new feature demoed during yesterday’s keynote at WWDC, which recommends apps based on your location.

This is a significant change from iOS 6, where the “Genius” option not only had a button at the bottom of the iOS App Store’s homescreen, it was also the button directly in the center – the one that invites users to tap it first.

App recommendations have been a tough business for many third-parties, and it seems that even Apple, too, is still experimenting with ways to make those recommendations more useful. But by introducing “Near Me” in favor of “Genius,” Apple has essentially given up on offering more personalized recommendations to users based on their preferences, and instead is providing only generalized app recommendations based on a user’s current location.

During the keynote, for example, the “Near Me” feature was demoed in the context of someone who is traveling. And certainly, launching the iOS App Store to find apps for nearby hotels, restaurants or attractions will be handy at certain times. But this isn’t an everyday need, so it’s curious why “Near Me” still gets the center position in the new store. After all, most users looking for new apps hit up the charts or the App Store’s Featured section, where algorithmic and curated lists like “What’s Hot” or “New and Noteworthy” offer better selections.

More Opportunity For Discovery Services?

The removal of “Genius” for apps comes at a time when Apple has been cracking down on alternative app discovery resources. In recent months, Apple has been accused by some – mainly the afflicted – of shutting down discovery services like AppGratis and AppShopper (the latter which later returned after changes), as if under some blanket policy designed to bring all tools for new app discovery in-house.

But that’s clearly not the case – if anything, the removal of “Genius” for apps now gives third-parties more opportunities to step in and try to fulfill users’ needs.

Apple’s policy against app discovery services, first enacted last fall, is there not to disallow these services, but serves as a warning to developers who are attempting to manipulate App Store charts for profit. The guidelines may have read that apps recommending other apps besides the developers’ own “would be rejected,” but Apple is using that clause to selectively dismiss those apps it knows are breaking the unspoken rules.

Other apps operating safely in this space include longtime app discovery source Appsfire and relative newcomer Hubbl, for example, neither of which have experienced the same troubles. In fact, Hubbl co-founder Archana Patchirajan tells us that their newest app update was approved in just three days for App Store release.

Why Genius Didn’t Work For Apps

The app recommendations market has seen some upheaval, and not just because of Apple’s rejections. Some of those operating services in the space, like Crosswalk for example, have since pivoted to other businesses while others shut down. Many that remain are still niche players. Apple itself hasn’t made any public moves, until now with the debut of “Near Me,” to offer any sort of new take on app recommendations. And it hasn’t acquired any startups the way it once did with Chomp in order to better understand the  challenges and possibilities in app recommendations.

But at least it has admitted by the removal of  ”Genius” (for apps - it’s still there in iOS 7 for Music), that its earlier system just didn’t work.

Appsfire co-founder Ouriel Ohayon thinks that Apple’s version of recommendations had never resonated with users because “both the experience and the recommendations were not that relevant,” he says. “Apps were mostly recommended based on what you downloaded versus what you really need and like (taste-based). What you download is not a signal of what you want next. Discovery is more than that,” Ohayon adds.

Users also probably didn’t see the need for “Genius” since they were already turning to the charts for Apple’s recommendations. And when they were looking for apps similar to those they have already installed, the “Related” section within each app’s listing page serves that purpose – and it remains in iOS 7, too.

Like myself, Ohayon also questions “Near Me’s” now prominent position in the App Store, which seems to be an indicator of just how much Apple is struggling to figure out personalized recommendations. “It is not a natural way of thinking. It is probably a good secondary discovery mechanism which could have been part of Genius,” Ohayon says.

Patchirajan agrees that Apple’s “Genius” mechanism had long fallen short of app discovery’s potential because what really works for personalized recommendations is a combination of several factors, not just a focus on “people who like X also like Y,” or your location, as “Near Me” now calls for.

Instead, a recommendation algorithm should look for a number of other signals too, including apps users own, users’ social profiles, users’ interest profiles, and situational awareness. “You need to have rich meta data around apps – just the category and keywords about apps is not enough,” says Patchirajan.

Impact On Developers Is Minimal

Though developers running businesses in this space will be biased against Apple’s own capabilities with regards to app recommendations, the broader consensus among those we’ve spoken with in the industry is that the removal of “Genius” won’t have a major impact on developers, in terms of having apps found by users and then gaining higher rankings.

Explains MobileDevHQ CEO Ian Sefferman, “from the marketer perspective, Genius was a hard nut to crack. Because it was so personalized, there was very little way to ensure that you get your app noticed within a user’s Genius recommendations.” (However, he believes the “Near Me” feature can potentially turn into another “Top Chart.”)

App downloads are still largely powered by Apple’s charts and Featured sections, not its experimental recommendation sections like “Genius,” and likely not the forthcoming “Near Me,” either. From what we’re hearing in terms of app store SEO (ASO, as it’s often called), not much has changed in iOS 7. Search appears to be basically the same from cursory glances. (Research into keywords and algorithm improvements will take some time).

The new iOS App Store “Wishlist” feature – something which has long since been an option in the desktop version of iTunes –  has now made its way to mobile, but that also isn’t likely to push apps through the charts since it’s basically a list of “maybes.”

For developers, unfortunately, it looks like more of the same.

Apple has reached 900,000 iOS applications, but its $10 billion in revenue paid to app developers is increasingly being concentrated at the top of the charts. Only 2 percent of the top iPhone publishers in the U.S. are newcomers, as it becomes harder than ever to break into the top charts.

Apple will eventually have to figure out a better recommendations system if it wants to cater to the ever-growing number of app developers who are still launching new creations in the hopes of being a part of the App Store gold rush, which is showing no signs of slowing down.

If it does not, those developers could turn their focus to Android. Google Play today growing at a faster rate on both downloads and revenues than Apple’s App Store, having jumped from 19 percent in total app revenue between it and Apple’s App Store last November, to 27 percent this April. Google Play also offers a larger consumer market share, and a slightly more welcoming platform for newcomer developers. However, the store has historically struggled to generate revenue for its developers, something which Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out yesterday referencing a number of data points indicating how much more engaged iOS users were with their devices.

But at the end of the day, Google/Android doesn’t have to have its entire user base obsessed with their phones – it just has to grow its user base large enough to drive a significant number of downloads, then payments and revenue for developers will follow by nature of its size and scale.

Meanwhile, keeping Apple’s app-dicted users with a steady stream of new apps to try will become something that Apple can’t leave to occasional tools like “Near Me” and  its App Store charts forever.

Users of Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices got their first look at the company’s newest operating system, iOS 7, earlier today. Not only has Apple given iOS an entirely new look and feel, courtesy of head designer Jonathan Ive, but it has also revealed a revamped suite of core apps like Photos, Camera, Calendar, Weather and others, added new services like iTunes Radio and features like AirDrop, while also making it less lucrative for would-be thieves to steal your iPhone, and much more.

During this morning keynote’s, company execs walked users through some of the biggest changes arriving in iOS 7, which launches in beta for iPhone developers today, with a larger public release expected this fall.

Here are some of the best new features and updates you can expect when iOS 7 ships later this year.

A More Modern Design

Let’s get this out of the way first: love it or hate it, the biggest change is the one we knew was coming – skeuomorphic design is dead. The new operating system has been redesigned from head to toe in a flatter — but not a totally flat — design as some had feared. Instead, there’s a transparency effect in place in many screens, and when you move the device in your hand, iOS now tracks the motion, allowing you to see behind the icons. This is great for background wallpapers, for example, as you’ll get to see more of your favorite homescreen photo previously hidden behind the apps.

Overall, the look is cleaner and simpler in many ways — the ugly green felt is gone from Game Center, for example. It is one of the most-hated apps in terms of being representative of the older, “skeuomorphic” design, which attempted to make apps familiar to users by coating them with elements from the real-world (like leather stitching, felt or yellow-lined notepad paper). The company took several digs at the old style in the process of introducing the new, as well. To be sure, there was no “evolution” at play here — this was murder.

iOS Gets A Back Button (Sort Of)

With an idea borrowed from several third-party iOS apps and BB10 (if you can believe it), the new version of the operating system now has a “back button” of sorts. Except it’s not a button really, it’s a gesture. Unlike on Android, where devices offer a dedicated software or hardware button for the function that means “go back to the previous screen,” the iOS back function is there when you need it but doesn’t clutter up the screen when you don’t.

Instead of a button, you swipe in from the left side of the screen (bezel to screen) to invoke the feature. It works in places you would expect, such as the Safari web browser, as well as in apps like Mail, and elsewhere.

Upgraded Default Apps

Apple has responded to the growing number of apps meant to serve as an alternative to Apple’s default set (think Calendar, Weather, Mail, Messages, etc.) with an overhaul of all its apps that ship with iOS devices out of the box.

Many of these seems inspired by some of the more popular applications in its own App Store, too, if not directly built by third parties, as the new Yahoo-powered Weather app is. Though not identical to the Yahoo Weather app in iTunes (which is arguably one of the highest-rated weather apps of all time), the new native Weather app shares a lot of the design elements, but replaces Flickr photo backgrounds for those of weather animations like rain or snow — also much like Android’s live weather widgets allow for today.

The native calendar app, now clean and white (and a lot like Sunrise), lets you swipe between days, turn to landscape to see a week in advance and zoom out to see your month or year.

Mail, meanwhile, offers big, edge-to-edge photos when used for photo-sharing and lets you take action on inbox messages with a swipe, which is a feature that earlier earned third-party app Mailbox an exit to Dropbox for around $100 million.

Safari got a big revamp too, with fancy 3D-esque tab-switching behavior, improved bookmarking, one-tap access to favorites, and even Twitter integration which lets you see which links your Twitter friends are reading and sharing.

The camera, meanwhile, has been updated with built-in Instagram-like filters, and the ability to swap between the different camera modes like “panoramic” or the new “square” camera view.

Photos & iCloud Photo Sharing

Though technically another default app update, the revamped Photos app deserves a deeper look because photo-taking is one of the iPhone’s (and all smartphones, really) most-used features. The Camera Roll itself has now been improved, organizing photos into “Moments” based on location and time – again, a feature inspired by the work of a number of third-party apps including Cluster, Moment.me, Flock, Tracks, flayvr, and others.

These collections will be auto-labeled with locations you visit. In the demo, that included venues like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts, as well as your home and your kid’s elementary school, for example. But as you zoom out to take a broader view, the locations merge together by date, letting you zoom all the way out to the year view where you can scroll and scrub through the photos, then tap to go into any one.

Built-in to this new experience is something called Air Drop, which is a new way to share photos with other iPhone users. (The poke at Android users: “there’s no need to wander around the room bumping your phone.”) Instead, photos and videos can be shared peer-to-peer over Wi-Fi connections with nearby users on newer iOS devices; they can also be shared via Facebook, Twitter, email, and into iCloud photo streams.

The photo stream was one of iOS’s lesser understood features among mainstream users, but the update makes it more accessible, allowing multiple users to contribute both photos and video, as well as comments to a shared stream.

iTunes Radio

Everyone had been calling it “iRadio” ahead of today’s announcement, but the feature’s official debut is worth noting even if the surprise was spoiled. As expected, iTunes Radio is very much a Pandora-like experience built on top of the iTunes music catalog and forged through new deals with the major record labels. Like most streaming music apps on the market, you can play pre-loaded stations by genre or create your own “artist radio” station, skipping and favoriting songs to teach the service your own likes and interests.

What Apple’s iTunes Radio does differently is that it also ties you back to the iTunes store, allowing you to “wishlist” your favorites, and purchase those tracks you want to hear on demand. The app is free and ad-supported, but ads are removed for iTunes Match subscribers.

Siri Gets Smarter

There wasn’t as big a focus on Siri as is needed (at least in the keynote demo), but the feature has gotten new male and female voices, which can now speak French and German with more languages coming “in time.” Notably, the service can now control more of your device, including playing back your voicemails, turning on or off things like Bluetooth, increasing or decreasing screen brightness and more.

It has also now integrated Twitter, Wikipedia and search results from Bing, so it can do things like read you Wikipedia entries or pull up web results.

Anti-Theft Features

The iPhone’s popularity and high resell value has led to it being one of the most stolen devices, too, but Apple’s new security upgrade is meant to make at least petty crime involving stolen iOS devices not worth criminals’ time and effort. Apple said that hundreds of millions use “Find my iPhone,” but as we know, thieves simply turn off devices and wipe them before re-selling them.

With a new “Activation Lock” setting, a thief won’t be able to reactivate an iPhone without hacking your iCloud user name and password, too. Although no security mechanism is bullet-proof, this makes it just hard enough to deter casual criminals or crimes of opportunity — like the phone that gets left behind at a bar, maybe?

A Better Notification Center

The notification center drop-down has also gotten a makeover, but considering how often users check this screen it’s surprising it didn’t get more show time this morning, when its new feature set was revealed. That being said, the center now splits your notifications more intelligently between top-level categories like “All,” “Missed,” and “Today,” the latter giving you a day-at-a-glance view into your To-Do’s, plus Stocks, Calendars, Weather and a small preview of Tomorrow at the bottom.

Easy Access Controls

A new gesture — a swipe up from the bottom of the screen — will now launch a “Control Center” interface which is like an easier-to-access Settings area. The ability to quickly dive into your Settings is a feature that Android phones have had forever, and iOS users have been clamoring for. Here, you can quickly tap things like “Airplane Mode” or access your Wi-Fi controls, for example, as well as a built-in flashlight (hooray!) and media player controls.

Intelligent Multi-Tasking

Before, the multi-tasking interface accessed by a double tap of the home button brought up a small rack of app icons running in the background. Today, it displays large windows showing the app’s interface in action instead. More importantly, multi-tasking has gotten smarter without damaging battery life, Apple claims.

Now all apps are able to run in the background, and iOS 7 learns from your patterns of app usage which ones deserve a more regular update. For example, an app you check often like Facebook will be updated more regularly than one you check once or twice per day. In addition, the apps update this information based on other factors, too, like whether you’re in an area with good cell coverage or whether or not you tend to respond to that app’s push notifications. All these things tie in to train iOS 7 to learn which apps are most important to you.

…And More

There are a number of new features which Apple didn’t have time to go through today, including FaceTime and iMessage blocking, per-app VPN capabilities for the enterprise, and more, but these are “icing on the cake” type of features on top of those given special attention today. In the weeks ahead, we’ll know more about some of these minor upgrades, as developers begin their beta tests of the new operating system and other details emerge.

The app ecosystem is showing no signs of slowing down. That’s what Apple essentially announced today, revealing that there are now 900,000 iOS applications available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Though the app stores are getting filled up and shifting more of the revenue to top publishers, the market itself is not decreasing as a result.

The company added 250,000 more iOS applications to its App Store from 2012 to 2013, in between its annual WWDC announcements. The year before, it had added 225,000 applications (between 2011 and 2012), and before that, some 200,000 new apps came on board.

That’s incredible growth, actually, because you would almost think that App Store growth would have been the other way around – that there would have been an initial gold rush as developers filled its virtual shelves with new apps, then growth would have slowed over the years as all the “good ideas” were taken, so to speak.

Even now, it’s harder than ever for indie developers to really make it on the App Store, but that doesn’t seem to be impacting the number of new apps available. And while it’s true that some are just now starting to shift their focus to Android and Google Play (which is starting to see a few success stories of its own), it appears that shift has not come at the expense of Apple’s iOS.

The App Store gold rush is clearly still in its early days yet.

One of the more interesting metrics to regularly emerge from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is the one illustrating the growth of its app ecosystem. Today, the company revealed the latest figures, announcing a total of 50 billion total downloads from the Apple App Store, up from the 30 billion to date it announced last June, and still just ahead of Google Play’s recently touted 48 billion. There are now 900,000 iOS applications available for download for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, with 375,000 designed specifically for iPad.

In June 2012, Apple said there were then 650,000 iOS applications, 225,000 built for iPad. And that was up from 425,000 iOS apps in 2011, when just 90,000 were iPad-ready. Apple also announced today there are 575 million paid customer accounts on iTunes, from people who can buy those apps.

Again the company made the point today that the app ecosystem is a financial boon to its developer community, too, saying that it has now paid out over $10 billion to third-party app developers. Apple paid developers $5 billion in 2012, $2.5 billion in 2011 and $1.5 billion in 2010 (to date), to give you an idea of the growth in years past.

Apple is still credited as being the leader when it comes to app developers’ abilities to monetize their creations. App analytics firm App Annie found that Apple mobile app developers earned around 2.6 times more revenue than Android developers in the first quarter of this year, for example. Competitor Distimo confirmed similar trends, including also Google Play’s steady growth on this front. And in the U.S. market in particular, that report found Apple’s lead was strong — among the top 200 grossing apps in both stores, Google Play applications brought in $1.1 million in daily revenue, compared with $5.1 million in the Apple App Store in April 2013.

That being said, the growth of the Apple app ecosystem has been a double-edged sword for many developers. Though the opportunity is there, it’s increasingly becoming a winner takes all market, where only 2 percent of the top iPhone publishers in the U.S. are newcomers, for example. It would be interesting to see how much of that $10 billion is going to those at the top of the charts, these days.

To the long tail of app developers, the announcement of app store growth and revenues to be gained may sound like a missed or out-of-reach opportunity. With app growth now reaching a more stable point, and Google Play’s speeding up, some of those developers may have already decided to ply their wares elsewhere.

According to news coming out of the Black Hat security conference this week, researchers have figured out a way to use the Square mobile payments system to access stolen credit card data. The ingenious thing about the hack demonstrated is that criminals would not even need to have the original stolen card present in order to use Square for fraud. Instead, they can convert magnetic stripe data into an audio file, use a stereo cable to feed it into the Square device (a small dongle that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack), and - ta-da! - the illegal transaction completes.

This hack turns the Square reader, a dongle meant to support swiped transactions, into one that can be used for electronic-only transactions, reports CNET. Creative? Yes. A real-world concern? We're not so sure.

However, a second hack, which turns the dongle into a card skimmer is of more concern. And it begs the question: where is the hardware encryption Square promised us earlier?

Researchers Adam Laurie and Zac Franken, directors of Aperture Labs, discovered two different ways to hack Square, which they demonstrated at the conference. The first, which turns Square into a device that accepts cardless transactions, while interesting, is not as distressing as the second hack, we believe. In order for the first hack to work, it would seemingly have to involve a fraudulent merchant account, since the hardware involved would eliminate the possibility of face-to-face transactions.

It's Hard to be a Fraudulent Merchant on Square

But it's hard to create a dummy merchant account on Square, despite its "open to all" nature.

Besides simply making it easier for any individual to accept credit cards at dramatically lower rates, the Square system also takes advantage of the smartphone's sensors itself to determine a device's location when the card is swiped. Transactions that show a San Francisco Bay resident has all of a sudden gone on a shopping spree somewhere across the country, for example, would be an obvious red flag to Square's risk management department, just as it would be for those using traditional credit card systems. And Square's risk management is done in-house, in real-time. So far, that's been a successful strategy for the company - its fraud protection rate of 0.05% is lower than the industry average of 0.07% and has remained consistent over time.

In addition, one of Square's less-talked about features is its ability to track device IDs alongside these geo-coordinates and then cross-reference those with social signals. Yes, social media signals. When new merchant accounts are verified, Square looks at their social footprint: their Facebook page and number of fans, their Yelp reviews, Twitter followers and retweets, blog posts, Flickr photos, Google Street view, etc. All these things are taken into consideration before a merchant is determined to be a "real" person, and not a dummy account of some sort.

This matters because the hack in question would seemingly necessitate a dummy merchant account in order to work. After all, what merchant would let a criminal attach some sort of contraption to their smartphone during a face-to-face transaction?

Square as Credit Card Skimmer: This is the Real Concern

From the sounds of it, the above hack is not as worrisome as the second, which turns the Square reader into a credit card skimmer. This is the same sort of issue that VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron raised in March, posting an open letter to his company's website warning consumers of the dangers involved with Square's technology. Using the Square reader and a fake Square application, VeriFone was able to turn the Square device into a free skimming machine.

While reporters from sites like GigaOm, TechCrunch and Gizmodo initially attacked VeriFone as waging a smear campaign against its competitor, the issue it raised, however indelicately, was valid. The Square dongle did not include hardware encryption, which is (and should be) a concern. Without encryption, hacks that turn the dongle into a free credit card skimmer are not just possible, they're easy to do.

Laurie and Franken demonstrated their variation of this hack at the conference, using a program that included less than 100 lines of code.

Soon after the VeriFone debacle, Square itself admitted that hardware encryption was a necessity. At a Visa conference in April, Square Security Lead Sam Quigley announced that Square would begin shipping dongles that offer hardware encryption sometime this summer. Well, summer's almost up now, and apparently, the encrypted dongles aren't yet available. Either that, or the researchers were using an older dongle to showcase their hack. Franken told CNET that he had heard Square would be shipping new dongles, but CNET was not able to reach Square to confirm. (Square is difficult to reach, for what it's worth. We tried too.)

Update: Square has provided an official comment -

Like all credit card processors, we aggressively guard against the use of stolen credit cards- and we use traffic analysis and other patented methods to detect and prevent malicious activity.

While the ingenious nature of the first hack is notable, the complexities to implement it in the real world make it less of a danger to consumers and merchants alike. In addition, as CNET noted, federal anti-fraud bank regulations in the U.S make it difficult for fraudsters to set up dummy accounts, too. Laurie suggested that criminals could pay legitimate account holders to operate as Square money mules, but frankly, that's a lot of effort when there are still much easier ways to commit fraud.

It's the second hack that should be concerning. Where's the hardware encryption that Square promised? When is it coming? Is it still coming? Why won't Square respond to reporters' questions about this?

Have you been waiting for more practical implementations of augmented reality (AR) technology outside of gaming and marketing initiatives? So have we. That's what makes the technology Zugara is launching now so interesting. It has teamed up with U.K.-based online clothing retailer Banana Flame to offer a virtual dressing room of sorts which lets online shoppers "try on" the clothes featured on the retailer's website.

Using the computer's webcam and Zugara's AR e-commerce software dubbed "Webcam Social Shopper," shoppers can immediately see what clothes look like on them and can ask friends for an opinion via Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, trying on clothes virtually isn't the same as trying on clothes in real life. You don't know how the fabric is cut, how tight or loose it is, how it will hang, how well it's stitched, or any of the other factors that go into making a real-world purchasing decision. However, it's a step closer to emulating that real world experience than anything we've ever had before. It's also kind of fun…well, when it works.

Using the computer's webcam, visitors to Banana Flame's website can instantly try on any of the clothing items it sells. To start the process, you have to step a few feet back from the computer, making sure the camera can see your face. The garment will then automatically position itself on top of what you're currently wearing. Using Kinect-like motions, you can then touch virtual buttons to make minor adjustments to the garment's position on your body. In fact, the technology seems similar to a Kinect hack that does basically the same thing.

You can also swipe your arm to navigate between the controls provided in the software. These controls let you change the garment's color, move it around or take a photo of you "wearing" the item. You can then immediately share that photo with friends via Facebook and Twitter using the software or download it to your computer.

In theory, the system sounds great, but in practice, it still needs some work. For example, it was completely frozen when we tried to use it on our Mac (in both Safari and Chrome), but worked well on our Windows PC (in IE). This appears to be related to the software's use of Adobe Flash - the Mac webcam is not set by default to work with Flash. There's a workaround for this, but an average user wouldn't know to try it. And the website doesn't offer instructions.

Also, we have to admit, using AR in this way is not anything like actually trying on clothes.

But it's a start. And not just a start at using AR for virtual shopping purposes, but a start for AR to be used for anything that's not some gimmicky marketing push, like AR-enabled posters or sports tickets. For that, we're grateful.

In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for July 2011. This month, we found a lot of great new iPhone apps, some Android and tablet apps, and a bunch of "notable" application updates.

As always, share your thoughts on those we missed in the comments below.

iPhone & Android / Cross-Platform

Spott: This app uses your phone's GPS to point to map out nearby film and TV locations. Great for entertainment buffs. ($0.99, iTunes and $1.13, Android Market)

Nosh: This food-spotting and reviews app lets you photograph, share and track great places to eat and the meals you've had there. (Free, iTunes and Android Market)

Facebook for Every Phone: This new app brings Facebook to over 2,500 phones worldwide. To download, go to m.facebook.com or enter d.facebook.com/install in your mobile browser.

MyMoby lets families privately share their location with each other and send alerts when needing assistance. (Free, iTunes, Android and BlackBerry)

iPhone

Batphone: This experimental app uses the phone's microphone to record the sounds in a room to develop an acoustic "fingerprint" for that space. The idea is that this type of location-detection could be used in future apps when GPS is not available. There's nothing much you can really do with this app right now, but what a cool concept! (Free, iTunes)

Capture: Instead of wasting time hitting "record" or adjusting settings, the Capture app starts recording video as soon as the app launches. Finally, you can record the kids before the moment has passed!($0.99, iTunes)

Trover: Newly launched app Trover was an undiscovered gem until the big press push this month surrounding the app's update. With Trover, you can connect with others to discover places and things nearby using photo-sharing combined with geolocation. (Free, iTunes)

Summify: This new iPhone app delves into the social news space to deliver periodic summaries of the news from your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader. (Free, iTunes)

Trimit: This app summarizes webpages into either 1,000, 5,000 or 140 character summaries for easy reading and social sharing. (Free, iTunes)

Katango: Like the idea of Google Circles but happy on Facebook? Katagno automatically organizes your Facebook friends into groups, then allows you to share just with them. It's automagical! (Free, iTunes)

Evoz: This app turns your iPhone, iPod or iPad into a baby monitor by working with another iOS device connected over Wi-Fi. Put one device in the baby's room, listen on the other. (Free, iTunes)

Dragon Go: This voice control app understands the intent of your questions and opens the appropriate website to provide an answer (e.g., Reviews of sushi restaurants might open Yelp, music by Lady Gaga, starts playing a song on your iPod, etc.) (Free, iTunes)

Photovine: This new photo-sharing app comes from Google-acquired Slide (yes, we know, weird!) Fun, but invite only for now. (Free, iTunes)

ON Voicefeed: A great new app for iPhone, ON Voicefeed lets you set up custom voicemail greetings for different callers or groups of callers. A premium version ($9.99/year) adds unlimited greetings and voicemail storage. (Free, iTunes)

Foreca.st: From the makers of Hurricane Party, Foreca.st lets you share where you're going with friends, then lets you check in using Foursquare when you arrive. (Free, iTunes)

Flixlab: This app lets you easily make movies and slideshows on your iPhone which you can then share with friends on Facebook. (Free, iTunes)

OfficeDrop: You can scan, search, organize and archive your paper files, PDFs and other documents using this new iPhone/iPad app and view them either on your device or the Web. (Free, iTunes - additional storage available for a fee)

im360: With this iOS application you can check out an amazing collection of 360-degree videos from your iPhone (Free for Lite version or $1.99, iTunes)

Android

ABC News: The official ABC News app arrived on Android bringing top stories, video briefs, pictures, breaking news and more. Select cities also have access to local news. (Free, Android Market)

Do it (Tomorrow): A great new productivity (or procrastination) app for Android, Do it Tomorrow lets you keep track of your to-do's in an attractive, simple interface. Cloud syncing is available, too. (Free, Android Market)

AwayFind for Android: This app brings email management tool AwayFind to mobile users, letting you route urgent emails to your Android phone or tablet, read the whole message and reply. Push notifications are supported too. (Free, Android Market)

Vellamo Mobile Web Benchmark: This new app from Qualcomm lets you evaluate Web performance in detail so you can see which Android devices offer the best experience in terms of browser performance. (Free, Android Market)

Localicious: This new Android app from WhitePages helps you find popular nearby businesses, plus real-time tips and trends. Foursquare users can also use the app to do "pre check-ins." (Free, Android Market)

Scrabble Free: This month EA launched its first free Android game, Scrabble Free, which includes all the features you love and expect. (Free, Android Market)

Tablets

SwiftKey X: One of the best alternative keyboard interfaces for Android added a ton of new features, including better predictive intelligence and "cloud learning," which lets you optionally connect to Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and SMS to improve its predictions. Android Honeycomb is also supported. ($3.99 for Android phones, $4.99 for Tablets, Android Market or Amazon Appstore)

Crayola ColorStudio HD for iPad: Not just an app, but an app and pen combo, this new experience for iPad actually lets your kids color on the tablet with a big pen. No more crayon on the walls! Can't wait for my daughter to be old enough for this! (App is free in iTunes, iMarker pen is $29.99.)

Star Trek PADD: The app you nerds (ahem, self included) have secretly been waiting for: the PADD turns your iPad into an authentic-looking PADD from Star Trek. For practical purposes, you can read Star Trek news, but really, who needs practical? ($4.99, iTunes)

iUsers: This iPad app sets up your iPad for use with multiple users, each with their own mailbox, settings and apps. (Jailbreak only - add http://cydia.iblogeek.com as a source then search for iUsers)

Birds-Eye: An iPad app that shows you who's tweeting around you. Simple, but fun. (Free, iTunes)

NASA Visualization Explorer: An awesome app for space geeks, this new iPad app provides a direct connection to NASA's research news in an engaging format using photos and videos. (Free, iTunes)

iSheetMusic: Although it works on iPhone too, we like iSheetMusic on the iPad instead - it's easier to see. As you may have guessed by its title, this app lets you search for, buy and organize sheet music collections on your device. An audible and visible Metronome are included, too. (Free, iTunes)

Notable Updates

You may have missed the following app updates this past month. Here are a few worth mentioning.

Social

• Foursquare launched notifications on Android (first!) and added directions to the iPhone versions.
• FriendCaster (Facebook app for Android, formerly called Flow for Facebook) came to Android tablets (in alpha, via invite)
• StumbleUpon! came to the iPad
• Hashable's social CRM app was updated with a new focus on privacy instead of broadcasting connections.
• Twitter for Android added push notifications and support for multiple accounts

News/Info

• Bloomberg arrived for Android tablets
• NASA's official app arrived on Android

Entertainment

• Amazon's Cloud Player arrived on iPad via a Web interface, and added unlimited storage for $20/year
• Hulu Plus for Android added support for more devices
• Zinio's magazine reader app expanded Android support to all Froyo and Gingerbread devices
• SoundHound for iPhone added LiveLyrics, which lets you search for lyrics for the music you're listening to
• IMDb added support for Android tablets and several new features
• TV guide app i.TV partnered with check-in service GetGlue on iOS

Google / Other

• Google Maps for Android added stop-by-stop information for transit and offline maps
• Google Docs for mobile browsers added the ability to sort, narrow and share multiple docs from your list
• Google Shopper was updated with support for Google Offers (local deals)
• Evernote for Android updated with new interface, rich text notes and more.
• Pinger brought free text messaging to European users
• Mint for iPhone was updated with more money management features, including the ability to add transactions while on the go
• M-commerce app Zaarly arrived on Android
• Cross-platform smart note-taking app SpringPad was updated with reminders, push notifications and badges (iOS)
• Thrutu, which lets you share information and media while on the phone, arrived on iOS

AppMobi has launched a new "XDK," which allows developers to build HTML5-optimized applications for the Web or for mobile platforms. The resulting code can be used to deliver great HTML5 applications, like those found in Chrome's Web app store, but it can also be used in hybrid apps submitted to Apple's App Store or the Android Market.

The XDK itself is a Web app, and is available in the Chrome Web app Store for free.

XDK Means Cross-Platform

If you can write code using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can use the XDK to build an application, says appMobi. There's no need to learn Objective C or download any other SDK's. Instead, the new XDK lets you use industry standards to build your apps, as well as appMobi's own aUX javascript libraries, for things like transitions and scrollers.

The XDK also offers debugging tools with on-screen emulation, local-on-device and remotely anywhere in the world, without ad-hoc builds or security features, says the company. And it works on both Mac and Windows.

Works with PhoneGap, Offers Cloud Services

In addition, appMobi says the XDK is fully compatible with the PhoneGap HTML5 cross-platform development project, which recently launched into version 1.0. Like PhoneGap, appMobi's XDK also provides access to a device's native features, such as the GPS, accelerometer, and camera, while also offering touch interaction, gestures, vibration and more.

Developers building apps using the XDK can choose to integrate appMobi's other services, which aren't typically a part of an HTML5 development suite. These include things like in-app purchases, rich media push messaging, usage analytics, secure user authentication and live app updating.

HTML5 App School

Along with the XDK, appMobi launched HTML5 App School, an online resource for those new to mobile development. It provides detailed information on all parts of the development process, from conceptualization, through planning and development, to posting the app on app stores. The App School site also provides access to tools, libraries and other resources, forums, code samples, seminars and instructional videos.

What Do You Think?

Some of the early reviewers of the XDK noted they had trouble with Java, but others seemed to have no trouble. If you try it, let us know what you think in the comments below.

A company called iSpeech has launched a free voice recognition and text-to-speech SDK for mobile developers building apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. During its pre-launch phase, iSpeech saw over 3,000 developers sign up for its service and powered 1 billion conversions in the cloud. Incidentally, 3,000 developers is the same number that Nuance, makers of the paid Dragon SDK, recently advertised themselves, says iSpeech's CMO Yaron Oren. But that was after significant marketing efforts over the course of 6 months, he added.

The price of the Dragon SDK is a barrier to entry for many developers and businesses, the company believes. iSpeech wants to be the more affordable alternative.

iSpeech on Mobile Goes Freemium

The iSpeech service is free to all mobile developers, and is available to Web developers who want to use the same technology via the iSpeech API and online payment system. On the Web, prices start at $.005 per word, but on mobile it's free. iSpeech says it may offer some value-added services on mobile in the future.

iSpeech is already used in several well-known apps, including Car & Driver's Txt U L8r, TeleNav's Evie, plus the company's own DriveSafe.ly app, and more. Its SDK's and API's provide over 40 text-to-speech voices and include support for over 25 languages. Premium services, like celebrity voices or custom text to speech voices are also available. Developers can also optionally pay for the ability to increase speech recognition performance specific to their use case, when applicable.

Those interested in trying out iSpeech can do so by signing up here.

Update: iSpeech says its FAQ regarding mobile ads was out of date, so we removed the reference to the credit purchasing feature from an earlier version of this post.

Location-based media company JiWire reports seeing increases in the sharing of and the demand for local deals, like those offered by Groupon, LivingSocial and others, since last quarter. According to data from a recent survey, sharing of deals has increased by 21% and demand is up 20% from Q1 2011.

In addition, only 8% never buy local deals, up from 28% who said they never buy them just a few months ago.

JiWire has been tracking the adoption of deals among a segment of the population it calls the "on-the-go" audience, which consists of those using notebooks, tablets and smartphones outside of the home or workplace. So, to be clear, these are not universal trends. They only apply to the highly mobile user, who connects to the Internet, checks email or uses mobile applications while away from their home or office.

Still, that describes a large swath of the Internet-connected U.S. population today, and especially those participating in the local deals space. Simply put, the trends occurring within this audience are notable for the deals industry.

Increased Sharing

Since Q1, JiWire found that sharing local deals is up 21%. Now, 75% of the on-the-go audience are sharing deals regularly, the company says. The most popular way to share deals is email (35%), but word-of-mouth (19%) and Facebook (18%) are also regularly used.

Demand for Deals Up, Too

Demand for deals has also increased over last quarter, says JiWire, with 28% of consumers now buying deals once per month, up from 20% in Q1. As noted above, only 8% say they never buy deals, a decrease from 28% a few months ago.

Women Prefer Less Expensive Deals than Men

78% of people spend an average of less than $50 on local deals these days, but when comparing trends between the male and female audiences, there are some differences. Women are more likely to spend less than $25 on deals, JiWire notes, while men will spend $25 to $50 on a deal.

Image credits: Lead image, Hudson Horizons; Charts: JiWire

Group messaging app GroupMe launched version 3.0 today, adding a number of new features and updates, including full Web access, International support, a redesigned interface, direct messaging and more. But the most notable of the new features is a "Q&A" option called "Questions," which encourages users to start conversations.

What's New?

The updated app brings GroupMe to over 90 countries worldwide, with support for over 900 carriers. However, SMS-based chat is not available outside the U.S., only in-app chat is. The option to include non-smartphone users into a group chat session within GroupMe via SMS has always been one of the app's best features, so we hope that international markets will one day have the same option.

The company also announced that GroupMe is cross-platform now, with apps for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, but none of those apps are new as of today. The newest apps, those for BlackBerry and Windows Phone, were launched over the past couple of months, with the Windows Phone app launched just a couple of weeks ago. GroupMe did a soft launch at the time, so this is the first the cross-platform support is getting any press.

We like the Web access option that now ships with GroupMe, which allows you to start, view and manage all your groups and messaging from the Web. This is great for being able to pick up where you left off, by allowing you to seamlessly transition between devices. Too bad more mobile apps don't offer a complementary Web experience like this!

Also new is a Twitter-like direct messaging feature that lets two people have a private conversation, initiated by a tap on their GroupMe avatar.

Mobile Q&A with Questions

Of course, the biggest and most interesting of the new features is "Questions." The feature is in beta testing, but has been made available to any who downloads version 3.0 of the app. Questions don't have to be targeted directly at a private group, like the groups of family members or friends you already have configured on GroupMe. While that is possible, the app also supports the option of posting public questions by broadcasting to Facebook or Twitter. And respondents can answer via Facebook or Twitter, thanks to the included website address posted alongside the update.

According to GroupMe, the idea with questions is to initiate a group chat when the "what" is defined but the "who" is not. That is, you have a question, but you don't know who might have the answer. For example, "anyone want to go to a movie?" or "what is everyone doing this weekend?"

It's an interesting take on how to combine Q&A and social, which Facebook itself has seemingly failed to capitalize on with its Q&A services "Facebook Questions." Perhaps the key to social Q&A is the mobile component?

Of course, Facebook may have already realized that. One of GroupMe's biggest competitors is a similar group messaging app, Beluga, which is now Facebook-owned. But so far, Facebook has not done anything with the technology Beluga offers, and the app still runs as a standalone service. But as Beluga's (public) development slows down, apps like GroupMe that continue to innovate and move cross-platform have a chance at gaining a critical mass of their own. If we had to pick between the two today, GroupMe would now come out on top.

Mobile application developers believe that Google's new social network Google Plus will have more impact on mobile growth and adoption than Apple's iCloud, or even iOS 5's Twitter integration. This is just one of the fascinating findings related to Google Plus revealed within the results of a new developer survey led by mobile cloud platform provider Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC. Together, the two companies had surveyed 2,012 app developers to better understand their take on current and future mobile trends.

The interest in Google Plus is somewhat surprising, considering that the social network's age is still measured in weeks, not months. But, according to Appcelerator's VP of Marketing, Scott Schwarzhoff, developers often take the long view when considering new services such as this, thinking 12, 16 or 18 months out into the future.

For example, last year, Appcelerator saw developers were displaying great enthusiasm for Apple's iPad pre-launch. And it's now seeing the same excitement for Google Plus.

How Developers See Google Plus

At 25% of respondents indicating interest in Google Plus, the results show it ranking higher than other products and trends, including Apple's iCloud (22%), NFC (18%), iOS 5's Twitter integration (14%), Android patent issues (13%), Amazon's forthcoming Android tablet (6%) and the HP TouchPad (2%).

In addition to Google Plus' impact on mobile growth and adoption, developers also said they believed Google Plus could catch up to Facebook in the long-term. Two-thirds said that the new social network would be an asset for Google in gaining mindshare among consumers and developers alike in addressing both the Facebook challenge and the Twitter/iOS 5 integration.

Why Mobile Developers are Excited About Google Plus

The reason developers feel this way has largely to do with Google's ability to leverage Google Plus across a portfolio of products, including Search, Maps, YouTube and more, all of which also have a mobile presence.

Other popular responses to the "why Google Plus" question included positive sentiments about the innovations Google Plus delivered (e.g., Sparks, Hangouts and Circles), its overall user experience, and Google's ability to bake in Google Plus deeply into its Android operating system.

That last item is an especially notable key advantage over Facebook, which does not yet have a deeply integrated Facebook experience on any mobile platform in particular, although there are some phones, like the HTC ChaCha (aka the HTC Status on AT&T), HTC Salsa and INQ's Cloud Touch, which offer a Facebook-focused experience.

But for developers, there's an understanding that what Google Plus may soon offer is not just another way to integrate "social" into their mobile applications, but an ability to map a user's particular "interest graph" into their apps, as well. For example, if a user has a Google Plus Circle of friends who like to discuss movies, explains Schwarshoff, an app like Flixster could take advantage of that for a more personalized and customized social experience. Similarly, a photo-sharing application could allow you to share some photos with just a Circle of family or friends, instead of the general public or a wider network of "followers."

For Now, Facebook Still Wins

All that being said, developers aren't jumping to use Google Plus within their applications immediately. For one thing, Google does not yet offer developer tools for Google Plus (i.e., a Google Plus API - application programming interface) so it's not even a possibility at this time.

However, although Facebook is the API leader over the next 12-18 months, according to the survey, Google Plus and Twitter are tied for second place in terms of future API usage.

Of course, it should be noted that what any survey respondent says they will do and what they actually end up doing can sometimes be very different things. But Appcelerator's surveys in the past have usually been on target when it comes to spotting trends.

And lest you think that Appcelerator's core audience is biased towards Android developers somehow, you'll be interested to know that, in fact, the opposite is true. iOS apps make up 75% of Appcelerator's 25,000+ mobile applications. The apps are Web developers primarily, not those coding in Java or Objective C. Web developers are those who are most focused on building cross-platform applications, which makes this group's thoughts on Google Plus most interesting indeed.

It looks like Google Plus will soon see itself integrated into iPhones and Androids alike through mobile applications, even though Apple has anointed Twitter as its social network of choice.

Appcelerator & IDC's new mobile developer survey is out now, with details on a wide range of development trends including platform choice, developers' future plans and mobile industry challenges. Notably, the companies have now added HTML5 as a new option to rank among mobile development platforms, and its middle-of-road showing indicates that mobile websites are increasingly a complementary requirement for today's mobile developers.

Meanwhile, despite seeing a slight jump back to Q1 levels of interest, Android tablets remain a platform with a number of challenges, developers report. Explains Appcelerator, these tablets are in somewhat of a "no-man's land" in terms of developer priorities right now, as developers aren't sure what to make of the overall Android Tablet picture.

Ranking the Platforms

One of the big questions the survey always asks developers is where each platform ranks in terms of developer interest. As expected, iOS (iPhone, iPad) are doing well, with 91% and 88% of developer interest respectively, as is Android (Phone), with 87% interest. The Android Tablet platform still ranks high, too, with 74% saying they're "very interested" in developing for that platform. HTML5 comes in 5th (66%), above Windows Phone, BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian and MeeGo.

But even though Android Tablets rank well here, Appcelerator says that mobile developers are confused by the Android Tablet space, which remains fluid in terms of the changing nature of the OS itself, the hardware and the form factor requirements. This confusion is reflected in the historical chart (below) which tracks developers' interest over time.

In January, prior to Android OS's launch on commercial tablets, developers said that pricing was the most important issue to consider. And indeed, Android tablets that were priced higher or equivalent to the iPad have not sold well, it seems.

But now, developers see other issues as even more important than price, including the need for user interface improvements, phone to tablet portability, fragmentation problems, increasing the size of the app catalog and more.

These can be seen in either a positive or negative light, depending on your particular viewpoint. For example, Appcelerator says that these suggestions could now indicate that in developers' minds, it's a question of "how" Android Tablets will succeed, as opposed to an "if."

More details on the survey results can be found on Appcelerator's website here.

AOL is launching its entry into the increasingly crowded iPad magazine space with the new application AOL Editions. The app is somewhat similar to other high-profile efforts like The Daily, Flipboard, Plus and Zite, but attempts to find its niche by offering a personalized, social, once-daily experience which is also publisher-friendly.

But most importantly, in an effort to further define itself, AOL has made the bold decision to forgo real-time updates in favor of a magazine that you can actually finish reading throughout the course of the day.

Your iPad Newspaper, Again

Although you can schedule your download of AOL Editions for any time of day, the magazine is clearly designed to be the iPad equivalent of either the morning or evening newspaper. The idea is that it's the paper (or magazine, we suppose) which you would read over breakfast or after work, while relaxing at home with your iPad.

According to AOL's own internal research, morning and evening are the two times of day where people really engage with their iPads. And for this reason, AOL decided to forgo offering real-time updates within the application.

"So many things today are beeping at you with breaking news," explains Sol Lipman, Senior Director of Mobile at AOL, "we wanted to make something that was succinct and completable." He also notes that most iPad owners are sitting at a computer most of their day, and can get real-time news online.

With its focus on a once-per-day interaction, AOL Editions is like News Corp's app The Daily. But unlike The Daily, AOL Editions doesn't provide original content nor does it employ human editors.

Instead, the content is sourced from a limited selection of top sources and it uses smart algorithms that learn your preferences as you tap through and read stories. These automated bots track things like what you clicked, how long you read an article and what topics you tend to prefer, among other things. Users can further refine the personalized experience by connecting to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and by choosing their favorite sections during the setup process.

Personalization Features

Each of the 15 sections (e.g. Design, Tech, Business, Family, Health & Fitness, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, etc.) can be edited to include your favorite sources and subjects. You can also sync with iCal and Facebook to see your events, meetings and birthdays on the magazine's homepage. And articles can be saved and shared by email, Facebook or Twitter.

The app offers a few cute touches, too, like a delivery notification that mimics the sound of a paper boy or girl riding up on a bike and throwing a newspaper on your doorstep and a section showing today's weather on the magazine's cover where the mailing label would be on a traditional publication.

There's also an interesting feature that involves using keywords for even more refined personalization. Each article is tagged with keywords, which themselves are sourced from Wikipedia entries about the article's subject.

Sources themselves, like BusinessWeek or CNN, for example, can also be selected as keywords.

"Personalize!," shouts the header where the keywords are displayed, "Tap the check on the things you want to see more of and the X on things you don't."

That seems straightforward enough for even non-geeks to understand.

Pageviews for AOL Properties & Others

Of course, this is an AOL product, so it leverages its own properties here, including Huffington Post, and all the brands that now fall under Arianna Huffington's watch as Editor-in-Chief, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, the local news content from Patch and others. It does not, however, appear to give any sort of weighted preference to AOL brands as news sources, as far as we can tell in our tests. It did however, attribute an article of mine here on ReadWriteWeb to the editor, Richard MacManus instead of me. And it put a slash in "Read/WriteWeb," even though we dropped that ages ago. But in the grand scheme of things, these are minor quirks and easily resolved.

Download for Free

AOL Editions is a product from AOL's "Mobile-First" group, a group whose focus is to develop new brands for AOL, like the recently launched music app AOL Play. With AOL Editions, the hope here is clearly to deliver a way to increase pageviews at AOL properties, within the context of an iPad application for consuming news. Editions sends readers directly to the article's website when tapped. It doesn't strip out text or ads, or attempt to reformat the article in an iPad-friendly format. It is displayed as the publisher chose, including inline photos or video, when applicable.

AOL Editions is a free download for iPad. You can learn more about Editions here. The download is expected to go live at midnight, perhaps sooner.

Layar, maker of the Layar augmented reality platform for mobile, has today announced Layar Vision, a platform extension that enables phones to "see" and recognize real-world objects, including posters, magazines and newspapers. With Layar Vision, the goal is to provide brands and print media publishers' with new ways to engage their audience using augmented reality experiences.

About Layar Vision

To use Layar Vision, developers must first upload reference images to Layar's servers. Those images are then used to extract the fingerprint of the object so it can detect, track and augment the object with audio, video and/or animated 3D objects, as specified. Currently the system only supports 2D images with 3D models on the target objects. Layar Vision will be able to instantly detect up to 50 target objects at launch.

The company says there are some limitations to what the technology can recognize and track. It works best on planar surfaces, like posters, magazines and newspapers, as mentioned above, as well as billboards, flyers, book covers, CD covers, paintings and other surfaces with "a minimum amount of discriminative texture and detail." This is different than Qualcomm's recently released AR SDK for iOS (the Android version was already available), which can track both planar objects as well as simple 3D objects like a box.

The Layar platform is already in use by over 10,000 developers who work to build AR experiences for smartphones. These experiences exist both as layers within the Layar smartphone application itself, as well as in third-party apps using the Layar Player. The Layar app has been installed 10 million times, and now has over 2,500 layers, the company says.

Where and When

Developers can expect to see Layar Vision included in the newest beta of the Layar Platform, arriving in the coming weeks, says the company, but no exact date was given for the launch. For developers using the Layar Player in their own apps, they can expect to see Layar Vision in the Q4 release, on both iPhone and Android.

In addition, to kickstart development, Layar is hosting a contest called the "Layar Creation Challenge," offering a total of $55,000 in cash prizes. The top 10 developers with the best and most useful concepts for Layar Vision will receive between $2,500 and $15,000. You can learn more about Layar Vision and the contest here.

Ansca Mobile, in partnership with InMobi and PapayaMobile, has today announced LaunchPad, a suite of marketing and analytics services targeted towards mobile application developers using Ansca Mobile's Corona SDK. The services will allow developers to better market their apps, increase distribution, improve monetization and better understand their audience, the companies say.

Marketing

The idea behind LaunchPad is to give developers a jumpstart on getting their application noticed. For starters, Ansca Mobile has provided a Marketing 101 Guide that will walk developers through all the steps needed to get an app discovered.

They've also patterned with app review sites Technobrains and AppShrink.com, where they have negotiated discounts to get developers featured reviews. And if a developer wins "App of the Week," they get a free review. Ansca says it will also select other applications for additional app reviews and placements.

Analytics

The included analytics product in Corona has also now been improved too. No longer will app developers have to create app ID's through a third-party provider, a task which the company thought was "a little bit clumsy." Starting today, developers will have access to easier-to-use, basic analytics, no app ID required.

Gaming

On the gaming side, Ansca partnered with PapayaMobile to offer developers access to its network of 22 million users worldwide. PapayaMobile's SDK has now been integrated into Corona's SDK, and the game network API have been unified under a single gameNetwork" library interface.

Monetization

For monetization, Ansca parntered with InMobi's advertising network, which serves over 36 billion ads across 165 countries. In tests, Ansca Mobile says it seeded the new library to select developers and found that InMobi generated up to 3 times more revenue than AdMob.

New SDK and More

The LaunchPad release comes alongside the latest version of the Corona SDK, which includes the features, improvements and bug fixes from the daily builds of the last 4 months. The back end has been updated for faster build times, too, especially for Android which is now 2.5 times faster than the previous public release. The new release also bundles several 3rd-party tools, with 30-day trials, including Corona Project Manger, Kwik, and Spriteloq.

Full release notes are here.

I don't hate the Toshiba Thrive Android tablet, which is probably the nicest thing I can say about it. Although heavy, it has a lot of ports. And it feels less heavy than it looks, I found. It runs a newer and more stable version of Android Honeycomb than some of its competitors do, too, so there are handful of geeky new features to enjoy. Overall, it's not a bad Android tablet.

But at the end of the day, the question still remains: who will buy this tablet over the iPad?

I've been in search of a great Android tablet - one that would lure me away from the iPad. But I haven't found it yet. I can't even say the Thrive comes close, because frankly, anything heavier than the iPad 2 is non-starter for me.

Need More Ports? Thrive Has That. (Also, Lots of Extra Weight)

Android tablet makers have been criticized for focusing more on specs instead of on the overall ecosystem. And if any tablet is guilty of this, it's surely the Toshiba Thrive. This tablet is more like a laptop, sans keyboard, especially if you go by the number of ports it offers. There's a full-sized SD card slot, an HDMI port, a USB 2.0 slot, a mini USB port, a docking port, plus the usual headphone and power jacks.

Maybe all those ports are what make the tablet so beefy. It's .62 inches thick, which is double that of the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. And at 1.66 pounds, it's closer to the iPad and the Xoom (1.5-1.6 lbs) in weight than the iPad 2 (1.33 lbs). These small differences matter a lot when you're talking about portable gadgets. After using the Thrive for reading, for example, it became uncomfortable to keep it propped up.

The Thrive also has a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 pixel display, the same as the Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1, the same 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor as the Galaxy Tab and a better camera than the Tab (5 megapixels vs. the Tab's 3 megapixels). Both have a 2 megapixels front camera, too. (If you really care about specs, you can delve into more of them here. We don't review hardware in this way, however.)

But What Can You Do with the Thrive?

What's more important is not the processor speed and pixel density, but what you can actually do with the tablet you purchase. Apple's iPad has an answer for that question, with over 100,000 native iPad apps, and 425,000 apps in total that work on both iPhone and iPad, combined. And it has iTunes, the marketplace for movies, TV shows, music, podcasts and educational content. The iPad no longer struggles to answer the question, "what can you do on a tablet?" It's now trying to limit the responses to the question of "what can you NOT do?"

That's not to say Android isn't making advances in this area. This spring, Google released an update to its Market which allowed users to rent movies and stream them to their devices. More recently, the mobile Android Market was updated so users could start the purchase process from their mobile, as opposed to only on the Web. But these are still baby steps, when you look at the larger challenge of reaching equity with the iPad.

For what it's worth, the Thrive takes a big step forward in trying to answer the question of "what to do" with the inclusion of pre-installed software applications. Although sometimes unwelcome, in the case of the Thrive, the apps aren't what we would call "bloatware." That's especially true since some of them that normally come with a hefty price tag are provided for free. The paid apps that ship with the Thrive include Quickoffice HD, LogMeIn Ignition and Kasperky's Tablet Security. There are also a ton of free apps pre-installed, like Angry Birds, Backgammon, Toshiba's own e-reader app "Book Place," Google Books, several card games, NFS Shift (a racing game) andThe New York Times.

I also really liked the bundled PrinterShare app, which easily found my Wi-Fi printer and let me immediately print out photos, webpages, documents, messages, contacts, Gmail, and more, without any hassle. Too bad that you only get 5 free prints before having to upgrade to the paid version, though ($12.95 from Toshiba's own store). That's the kind of thing which Toshiba should have thrown in for free to make the tablet more competitive. It's really a great feature.

Pure Honeycomb 3.1…if You Like That sort of Thing

On the software front, Toshiba's Thrive is notable for the fact that it's the first to ship with Android 3.1, the latest version of Honeycomb. That means you can do nifty things like resize your homescreen widgets and enjoy other minor user interface improvements, like a bigger "recent apps" list. And if you like Honeycomb, you'll like the Toshiba Thrive because at the very least, Toshiba didn't bog down the operating system (OS) with a overlay like Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense.

But...

Well, I'm just going to say it.

I don't like Honeycomb. I don't think it's a great tablet OS in its current state. I don't think that relocating the menus and controls that you find at the bottom of Android smartphones to the top of the screen on Android tablets makes sense. As you move back and forth between your Android phone and tablet devices, the swapped layout gets confusing.

Plus, everywhere you look, there's some sort of button, control or menu system: search is accessed in the top-left, access to the apps menu is at the top-right, navigation buttons are in the bottom-left while notifications and the clock are in the bottom-right, similar to what you would find in Windows PC's "system tray." Because really, if you're going to rip off a design, you would copy from Windows?

But it's unfair to criticize Toshiba for Google's design choices, and my own personal preferences. If you're an Android geek at heart, you might enjoy Honeycomb quite a bit. If so, you'll enjoy it more on a Toshiba Thrive.

At the end of the day, the Toshiba Thrive is a good enough Android tablet, maybe even one of the better ones, but it's not a good enough answer to the question "why not an iPad?"

The Thrive is available in 8 GB ($429.99), 16 GB ($479.99) and 32 GB ($579.99) models.

Mobile application search and discovery service Chomp has released its June 2011 report on app search trends and found that, for the second consecutive month, paid app downloads on Android have increased. The increases are small; paid Android app downloads increased just 2% from April to May and only 1% from May to June.

And in total, only 6% of all Android downloads on Chomp's network were paid.

In other words, these small jumps don't seem to signify any major shift in the overall trend involving the dominance of free apps on Android. However, it will be interesting to watch this space to see if this trend continues. After all, over time, even small increases can add up.

The 1% increase on Android was spread out across multiple price levels, but the $4.01 - $5.00 range saw the largest jump, from 0.1% to 0.6%. The most popular categories were games, utilities and entertainment.

In comparison, iOS app developers saw a 4% increase in paid apps last month, over May. The ranges seeing the most growth there were the $0.99 and $1.99 price levels. The $4.99 price level also saw an increase, going from 0.8% in May to 1.0% in June, while the $9.99 price level declined from 0.3% in May to 0.1% in June.

In addition, the word "free" was the number one search term across all countries sampled on Android, through the Chomp app for Android.

On iOS, the company saw much more diversity on search terms, although "games" was a popular query.

American Express' new digital payments platform Serve has just announced its second operator partnership here in the U.S. will be with Verizon Wireless. This news follows last month's report that Sprint would also integrate the Serve platform into select Android phones on its network.

According to Verizon, its customers will be able to sign up for Serve accounts on both Verizon phones and tablets, although it did not specify which devices those would be.

Serve, which can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account, does not require users to be American Express card holders. Instead, it's aimed at those who don't rely on credit cards. With Serve, customers can shop both online and offline, anywhere American Express is accepted.

Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use Serve to buys goods and services on their mobile device in just a few clicks. The process is easier than entering in a credit card number by hand, because all that's required to checkout using Serve is your mobile phone number.

American Express and Verizon will also team up to use Serve as a way to source, distribute and enable the redemption of online and mobile offers with participating Serve merchants. The offers and coupons customers redeem at checkout will automatically appear in their Serve accounts, which can be viewed and managed online and on mobile.

In addition, both companies are working with Payfone, a mobile payments startup which American Express invested in this spring.  Payfone helps to combine mobile authorization and payment services with the Serve platform. This allows customers to pay for both digital and physical goods using just their phone number. Payfone is unique as it leverages the security built into mobile operator networks to fight fraud. With Payfone, the customer's SIM card, device ID and location are tied to each customer's account for more secure transactions.

Merchants interested in learning more about accepting Serve can visit www.serve.com/billmyphone.

Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Not Flash.

Aimed to coexist with Adobe Flash, not replace it, the Web design software is Adobe's big bet on how it will continue to solidify its position as a top player in the infrastructure of the modern Web, especially as the Web goes increasingly mobile. In this new mobile context, the Web has become a more hostile environment for Flash, which has no place on Apple mobile devices, and likely never will.

HTML5 vs Flash...or HTML5 and Flash?

Although Flash still accounts for the majority of website animations today, that won't always be the case.

So does Edge's launch mean that Adobe caved and ceded the battle to HTML5 over Flash? Adobe doesn't see it that way. Although battles make for good headlines here in the world of tech journalism, it's not really an either/or scenario when it comes to the "Flash vs. HTML5" conundrum in the professional world. For today's Web designers and developers, both technologies are still used.

Adobe's Support for HTML5 Continues with Edge

"HTML5 is an opportunity for Adobe," explains Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager for Adobe's Web Pro Segment, "that's not to say there aren't opportunities for Flash." He contends that Flash will continue to push forward, and, as we have reported previously, it will focus on areas that HTML5 cannot yet address as well - like 3D gaming for example. (Although even there, HTML5 is making inroads.)

Still, with HTML5 being a relatively new technology, it doesn't today deliver a consistent experience across the widest range of devices and browsers. For example, Windows XP, which even to Microsoft's own chagrin remains a fairly popular computer operating system, can only run up to Internet Explorer 8. That means it can't take advantage of the many major leaps in terms of HTML5 support introduced in IE 9.

In other words, Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike.

What Does Edge Do?

Adobe claims it has been a strong player in HTML5, going back to April 2010, when it first began introducing support for the technology in its product line, including Dreamweaver, Illustrator, its Digital Publishing Suite and, more recently, its Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, Wallaby.

Now, with Adobe Edge, it aims to provide the tools that will help professionals build Web animations, and in the future, even simple games. At present, Edge will focus on its core animation engine, but in the future, it plans to add more HTML5 features, including Canvas support, support for HTML5 Audio and Video tags, richer support for animating SVG graphics and more.

The software (for both Mac and PC) is designed to have an intuitive paneled user interface, a fast startup time, and will include, at the bottom, the familar timeline feature creative professionals already know and understand. Edge users can import existing HTML documents and graphic assets including SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF and then sytle them with CSS3. Panels on the left and right provide access to properties of the .EDGE file and the various elements the designer is working with. And in the center, there runs an embedded version of the WebKit browser.

When a project is complete, it will work on modern Web browsers like those that run on Android, iOS, HP's webOS, the BlackBerry PlayBook, plus Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9.

Where to Get Adobe Edge

Starting today, Adobe Edge is available as a free download while in its public preview period. The 1.0 product is expected to launch next year.

This is a hugely important launch for Adobe - one that IDC analyst Al Hilwa, says is "the biggest thing they have done so far." Hilwa likes Adobe Edge, and believes it shows that Adobe is really in-tune with designer needs.

"Adobe has started working on HTML5 and has brought many little things, showing that they can pivot nicely to new trends," Hilwa told us. "It shows that they can remain the premier tools vendor no matter what the technology inside is."

Will designers agree with Hilwa's sentiment, though? In time, we'll know.

Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Not Flash.

Aimed to coexist with Adobe Flash, not replace it, the Web design software is Adobe's big bet on how it will continue to solidify its position as a top player in the infrastructure of the modern Web, especially as the Web goes increasingly mobile. In this new mobile context, the Web has become a more hostile environment for Flash, which has no place on Apple mobile devices, and likely never will.

HTML5 vs Flash...or HTML5 and Flash?

Although Flash still accounts for the majority of website animations today, that won't always be the case.

So does Edge's launch mean that Adobe caved and ceded the battle to HTML5 over Flash? Adobe doesn't see it that way. Although battles make for good headlines here in the world of tech journalism, it's not really an either/or scenario when it comes to the "Flash vs. HTML5" conundrum in the professional world. For today's Web designers and developers, both technologies are still used.

Adobe's Support for HTML5 Continues with Edge

"HTML5 is an opportunity for Adobe," explains Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager for Adobe's Web Pro Segment, "that's not to say there aren't opportunities for Flash." He contends that Flash will continue to push forward, and, as we have reported previously, it will focus on areas that HTML5 cannot yet address as well - like 3D gaming for example. (Although even there, HTML5 is making inroads.)

Still, with HTML5 being a relatively new technology, it doesn't today deliver a consistent experience across the widest range of devices and browsers. For example, Windows XP, which even to Microsoft's own chagrin remains a fairly popular computer operating system, can only run up to Internet Explorer 8. That means it can't take advantage of the many major leaps in terms of HTML5 support introduced in IE 9.

In other words, Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike.

What Does Edge Do?

Adobe claims it has been a strong player in HTML5, going back to April 2010, when it first began introducing support for the technology in its product line, including Dreamweaver, Illustrator, its Digital Publishing Suite and, more recently, its Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, Wallaby.

Now, with Adboe Edge, it aims to provide the tools that will help professionals build Web animations, and in the future, even simple games. At present, Edge will focus on its core animation engine, but in the future, it plans to add more HTML5 features, including Canvas support, support for HTML5 Audio and Video tags, richer support for animating SVG graphics and more.

The software (for both Mac and PC) is designed to have an intuitive paneled user interface, a fast startup time, and will include, at the bottom, the familar timeline feature creative professionals already know and understand. Edge users can import existing HTML documents and graphic assets including SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF and then sytle them with CSS3. Panels on the left and right provide access to properties of the .EDGE file and the various elements the designer is working with. And in the center, there runs an embedded version of the WebKit browser.

When a project is complete, it will work on modern Web browsers like those that run on Android, iOS, HP's webOS, the BlackBerry PlayBook, plus Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9.

Where to Get Adobe Edge

Starting today, Adobe Edge is available as a free download while in its public preview period. The 1.0 product is expected to launch next year.

This is a hugely important launch for Adobe - one that IDC analyst Al Hilwa, says is "the biggest thing they have done so far." Hilwa likes Adobe Edge, and believes it shows that Adobe is really in-tune with designer needs.

"Adobe has started working on HTML5 and has brought many little things, showing that they can pivot nicely to new trends," Hilwa told us. "It shows that they can remain the premier tools vendor no matter what the technology inside is."

Will designers agree with Hilwa's sentiment, though? In time, we'll know.

With today's launch of PhoneGap 1.0, a framework that allows developers to build mobile apps using Web standards, it seemed like a good time to put up a poll about HTML as an app platform. HTML, and in particular, HTML5, has come a long way to addressing the needs of cross-platform development by delivering a platform where apps can run on any modern browser. But is it ready yet for you? How do you use HTML when building your apps? Or do you?

Share your thoughts on HTML as an app platform in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

There is a growing awareness about HTML as an app platform, but it still has some catching up to do when compared with its native counterparts. HTML apps need increased access to native APIs, improved runtimes (native aps don't need to worry with Web runtime barriers), and there needs to be more consistency in terms of how Web apps run across various platforms. We'd also like to see more apps that take advantage of HTML5 features, like offline access, for example.

On the other hand, the Web is easy to build for, flexible, future proof (to some extent), and comes very close to the "write once, run anywhere" holy grail.

Not all apps do well built solely using HTML, however. Those needing access to native features (e.g. integration with the camera), rich media, high performance (e.g. gaming), etc., may do better with a native approach.

So now it's your turn: have you used HTML to build your mobile applications? What did you learn from the experience? Tell us in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll and/or in the comments below.

PhoneGap, the open source mobile developement framework that allows mobile developers build apps using Web standards, is launching today into version 1.0. This is a milestone release for the platform, which now adds additional APIs, features and improvements in its newly updated product.

The launch is being celebrated in Portland, at an event called PhoneGap Day held at Urban Airship, a company which just had some major news of its own. Champagne all around!

Mobile developers know PhoneGap as the platform that provides a way to build apps using HMTL, CSS and JavaScript, all of which are common Web standards. PhoneGap developers can use either the free open source framework or the newer PhoneGap Build service (beta) which returns apps for iOS, Android, webOS, Symbian, BlackBerry and soon, MeeGo and bada.

The open source code has been downloaded over 600,000 times, at a rate of around 40,000 times per month, says PhoneGap creator Nitobi.

What's New in PhoneGap 1.0?

With the launch of PhoneGap 1.0, the company says the focus was on accessing native device API's.

Other improvements include:

• Overall API stability and “pluggable” architecture
• W3C DAP API compatibility
• Contacts API
• Remote debugging tools
• A new unifying bridge interface that makes adding platforms and platform extensions easy
• Improved plugin development processes

Most of the improvements to PhoneGap 1.0 came from its community of developers, which Nitobi CEO Andre Charland says is PhoneGap's "greatest asset." Contibuters include Nitobi, hundreds of indvidual developers and a team of senior software engineers at IBM. Adobe has also shown support for PhoneGap in its Dreamweaver software. Others, including Alcatel-Lucent, Sabre, Cisco, Logitech and Time Warner, have adopted it as well, Nitobi says.

PhoneGap 1.0 will be officially launched at this afternoon's party, which will inlcude talks, device hands-on's, demos and, of course, beer.

Did you miss out on the initial round of invites to Google's newest cloud locker service, Google Music? Well, today's the day to hit up your Google Music-loving friends for an invite. Existing users have been awarded just two invites each, which they can give out to anyone they choose. However, the service is still U.S.-only, so you may want to hold off on sharing with your overseas friends just yet.

Google Music is Cloud Storage for Songs

Google Music was announced at the Google I/O conference in May, and launched into beta. Initially, only I/O attendees were invited to join.

The service is similar to Amazon's "Cloud Drive," in that it also offers a place for users to store their music files "in the cloud" - the cloud in this case being Google's servers. But unlike Cloud Drive, there's no accompanying music store where you can purchase more tracks to fill your collection.

Still, for those with extensive music collections of their own, Google Music is a decent enough way to access those files from any Android mobile device, without worrying about storage limitations. The tracks stream over the network when played. Offline access is available too, if you've explicitly made select music available for offline listening.

Be Warned: You'll Need Some Time!

The one big drawback to using Google's service, is the time it takes to upload your files. For those who have collections that number in the 10's of Gigs, you'll have to start the upload process, then walk away for a cup of coffee…lunch, then dinner, a good night's sleep, breakfast, and maybe more.

Uploading is painful because Google Music doesn't have the necessary legal permission to do "music matching," a feature that would check your track lists against Google's own music collection. This is what Apple is offering with its forthcoming iCloud service: iTunes in the cloud. For paying customers ($25/year), iTunes will scan your music and match it to the 18 million songs it has in the iTunes Music store and make those available from all your Apple devices. It's a much easier entry point for cloud music, we would say. But iCloud is not Android-friendly. And Google Music is not Apple-friendly, except for some clunky workarounds.

At least once the collection is (finally) online, using the Google Music app is easy. It's a simple download for your Android device.

And for more information on the differences between Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, check out our earlier review here.

How to Get Invites

If you know someone who's a current Google Music user, now's the time to ask for an invite. After logging into the service, the orange bar at the top of the screen should read "Invite a friend: 2 remaining." Just click the link to hand them out.

Why so few invites? Probably to limit the impact on the still-beta service. Thousands of people uploading thousands of gigabytes of music all at once would be a strain on any service's infrastructure, even Google's.

Image credit: lead - LifeofAndroid