Remake of classic game Pacxon to be released by
Codespot Mobile

post from prMac on 09 May 2012 03:55:00 PM. © prMac

On May 10, 2012, Codespot Software Company will release Pacxon: Legend is back - the new version of the classic game Pacxon. It will be available on the App Store. In a twist to the classic version, Pacxon: Legend is back has smoother design with HD resolution and easier control on touch screen devices. Encapsulating the essence of the legendary arcade game Pacxon, this game challenges players to build walls to fill up 80% the clear area without being hit by evil ghosts.

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HP: we don’t copy Apple, plus 4 other Apple
stories to read today

post from Apple on 09 May 2012 03:03:49 PM. © Apple

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the web that you shouldn’t miss:

Engadget caught up with an HP exec to ask about the similarities between its latest HP Envy SpectreXT ultrabook and Apple’s MacBook Air. Here’s what they were told: “The thing is that you have to design what’s right, and that is that sometimes the wedge is the right solution, silver is the right solution. I see a lot of differences as much as the similarities.” The whole explanation is worth reading.
Proview, the company suing Apple over the iPad trademark in China, can’t sue Apple on its home turf in California. The Wall Street Journal has the story on the judge’s decision.
Forbes tackles the coming mobile payments battle and argues that Apple could easily trump all competitors by taking almost no fees: ”Apple?s prize is simply to boost sales of high margin iPhones. The mobile wallet will be a key selling feature and create yet another means to lock people into the iOS platform.”
John Battelle talks with Internet thinker Lawrence Lessig about how businesses, more than governments, are working to regulate and control the web. Money quote: “Apple has fully normalized the iNannyState.”
Ars Technica has a good update on the eight-year-old class-action lawsuit against Apple for allegedly quashing competition with its iTunes music service. iPod owners who bought their devices during a certain period are now allowed to join the suit.

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today/

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Apple’s low-key lobbying efforts no
surprise

post from Apple on 09 May 2012 03:03:49 PM. © Apple

Politico has a great post Wednesday that details how folks in Washington, D.C. are rather astonished how Apple–a company that’s often the target of federal inquiries and investigations– isn’t blanketing Capitol Hill with lobbyists and money. Sure, that seems to go against standard procedure in our nation’s capital. But as is well known in tech, Apple isn’t a company that tends to follow standard procedures.

For the first quarter of 2012, Apple has spent a mere $500,000 on lobbying efforts, which, as Politico points out, is pennies compared to what oft-targeted Google and Microsoft have spent during the same time: $7 million combined. And Apple, despite its current entanglement with the Department of Justice over its role in the e-books market, has actually spent less this year than last year.

This is just not how things are done in D.C. Here’s a sampling of what Washington insiders told Politico:

?I never once had a meeting with anybody representing Apple,? said Jeff Miller, who served as a senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee?s Antitrust Subcommittee for eight years. ?There have been other tech companies who chose not to engage in Washington, and for the most part that strategy did not benefit them.?
?There?s a difference between being quiet and uncooperative,? said a congressional aide who has dealt with Apple. ?Part of the problem being behind the scenes is they have no identity. They have no corporate identity in this town because nobody knows them.?
?What?s happened in Washington more and more is that companies spend money dealing with the regulators even in the absence of pending investigations. ? These are de-biasing visits,? said Bill Kovacic, a George Washington University law professor who was a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission from 2006 to 2011. ?I don?t remember Apple making a visit.?

While this may surprise political folks, this will come as a shock to few people in tech or who follow Apple. The company’s secrecy and reticence to telegraph what it’s thinking is legendary. So it’s no surprise Apple isn’t visibly mixing it up in Washington when, as Adam Lashinsky noted in his “Inside Apple” book released earlier this year, Apple doesn’t even mingle freely in its own backyard: employees aren’t visible at Silicon Valley mixers or events, executives don’t sit on other companies’ boards, and they don’t make a show of going out of their way to make any potential friends or gaining partners.

Some get it. As one unnamed source told Politico, it could look really bad if they weren’t subtle about trying to gain political influence: “‘It wouldn?t take much to hit the tripwire’ to launch the narrative that ‘Apple has problems and is trying to buy the town.’?

This is not to say Apple won’t step up its lobbying game. It does have a small office for that purpose in D.C., but the way it tries to gain sway over politicians certainly won’t follow any pre-defined script established by other companies — even other tech companies.

And you could say Steve Jobs was plenty savvy about wielding influence in Washington: he just went straight to the top. Sending the president the world’s most anticipated new gadget before it was available to the public is a pretty decent way of making friends.

Thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user Mr. T in DC

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Interview: 5 Questions for Future CEO Mark Wood

post from Apple on 09 May 2012 02:03:33 PM. © Apple

“The iPad is not the saviour of magazines,” concedes Mark Wood. But for special-interest consumer magazine publisher Future – which on Wednesday launched its latest multimedia title, Total Music – it could prove era-defining at the least.

Future flooded iTunes Newsstand with 65 titles in October and, by January, had clocked up 430,000 individual sales from 10 million free magazine downloads. “We can claim to be to be leading publisher on iPad, worldwide,” Wood tells paidContent.

Now Wood’s group plans to make more of those editions interactive, and to start selling to rivals the very tools it is using to make them.

#1. What are the latest numbers for your tablet magazines?

“We’ve moved on (since January). In March, we were at over 12 million container app downloads, had five million people signed up for marketing messages, which is a lot, and way past half a million sales.

“We saw a big spike when iPad 3 was launched – the more devices that are launched, the more we will see people prepared to pay for content.”

Future reached a milestone in Q4 2011 when digital revenue gains made up for print declines for the first time. Next stop, digital revenue fully overtaking print? “We’re heading that way, yes,” Wood reckons, though it is some way off.

#2. Some observers say sceptically that early tablet magazine sales were just novelty spikes. Is iPad a gift that can keep on giving?

“If you take our T3 magazine, sales of its editions have carried on climbing. It is still the top-selling magazine on Newsstand; we’re not seeing any change in that pattern.

“Overall, it demonstrates people are prepared to pay for content.”

“The more magazines which go on Newsstand, the harder it gets to find stuff. iTunes introduced simple navigation but the navigation is getting clogged. Apple is aware of that and is looking to improve it.

“T3′s are big numbers, our others are not so big but are significant and enough to make profits, especially as sales of tablets grow. We are looking at numbers that project there will be close to a billion tablets by 2015.”

#3. Why did you develop your own tablet publishing software, and why are you trying to license it to rivals?

Of its interactive editions, Future launched T3 magazine to iPad, pre-Newsstand, using the Woodwing production software, and followed it up with Guitarist magazine built using Adobe Digital Production Suite – amongst the many packages catering to publishers’ migration ambitions, including Mag+, PixelMags and one from Siemens.

But, unusually for publishers who often buy in the service, it then turned its in-house app developers toward building Future’s own iPad magazine production software, Folio, which it has since used to roll out Tap!, Cycling News and Total Film. More are in the pipeline.

“It’s very flexible,” Wood says. “There aren’t many other software technologies out there with the range it’s got.

“Our Future Music magazine has always produced covermount discs with audio – now we’re embedding that in the magazine.”

“One thing we tried to achieve was to have a system which enabled us to produce multimedia editions with the least possible additional work, because a video-rich edition like T3 can add three people to your headcount if you’re not careful.”

So how many of the 65 page-turner replicas, out of Future’s 70 Newsstand titles, will be converted to interactive using Folio?

“We are aiming to get almost all the portfolio to be interactive to one degree or another,” Wood says.

“Consumers are becoming more demanding – they want exciting editions. We will certainly convert all the ones we think will sell well. We will go through a winnowing process at some stage.”

Next up, Future hopes to license Folio to rival magazine publishers to produce their own interactive editions – something which will see the publisher go head-to-head with vendors like Adobe and Mag+.

#4. What place does the long tail play in magazines? It seems like the book sector, which is going episodic, and the magazine industry, which is publishing more timeless editions, are each converging at the same middle point from opposite ends.

“I agree, that’s a good way of looking at it.

“We are looking at how we can repackage our existing material from back issues, things that run along in themes.

“The back content is still of interest. We’ve learned on ipad that back issues carry on selling for quite a long time – you just don’t take them off.

“With one of our Photoshop guides, a repackaged product at £11.99 – we’ve sold between 1,000 and 2,000 – that will stay up there for a long time. We’re looking now at what else we can do.”

#5. What are Future’s international plans?

As part of an effort to turn around its U.S. business, where newsstand print circulations are declining faster than in Europe, Future last year stated its ambition to turn its efforts there more digital, more quickly than previously planned.

The group launched its TechRadar web portal in the States in April. “First feedback is good,” Wood says. “We will do the same with BikeRadar next month because we want to build our U.S. cycling presence very quickly. We want to make it a very American product.”

Wood hinted Future is also looking to new markets beyond the U.S., too. “Every time we go in with a new English-language product, it’s very large margins.”

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Fuggedaboutit: New Jersey firm claims patent on
3G, sues Apple, Samsung

post from Apple on 09 May 2012 02:03:33 PM. © Apple

This one is a doozy even by the standards of the runaway smartphone litigation of the past few years. A New Jersey company claims it owns 3G technology and wants the entire industry to pay up.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles, Golden Bridge Technologies claims that devices like Apple’s iPhone and Barnes & Noble’s Nook violate a patent it received in the year 2000.

US Patent No. 6,075,793 describes a “High efficiency spread spectrum system and method.” It relates to a highly technical process involving chips that share data sequence signals across channels.

In its complaint, Golden Bridge provides a history of cell phone technology and says it contributed to essential features of the emerging 3G standards that began to be developed in the 1990′s.

Owner of a patent that forms part of a standard are typically required to license it to others on reasonable terms.

Other companies named in the suit include Research In Motion, HTC, Sony, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard.

Here’s a copy of the complaint:

Golden Bridge v. Apple Et Al

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Heabox Launched Ecommerce Site Selling Quality
Phone Cases

post from prMac on 09 May 2012 01:08:00 PM. © prMac

Heabox launches its first eCommerce site. The site offers huge range of quality phone cases and accessories. The online store now carries a limited range of iPhone cases, iPad cases, Galaxy Note cases and as well as other relevant cellphone accessories at the moment. iPhone cases include categories such as iPhone leather cases, iPhone hard cases and many more. There's a dedicated awesome iPhone cases category which features the coolest and weirdest cases out in the market.

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Smoked by Windows Phone by the Numbers

post from Daring Fireball on 09 May 2012 01:04:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Speaking of Windows Phone, Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph has an update on their “Smoked by Windows Phone” campaign. It occurs to me that Rudolph is to Windows Phone today what Guy Kawasaki was to the Mac back in the mid-?90s: a likable human face for a likable underdog platform.

?

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-by-windows-phone-by-the-numbers-and-new-ads.aspx

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Paul Thurrott: Is Time Running Out for Windows
Phone

Paul Thurrott:

I?m as concerned, in a way, with what is very clearly yet anotherdo-over. Yes, Windows Phone 8 will retain the Windows Phone name,and yes, it will run ?legacy? Windows Phone 7.x apps, those appsthat were written in Silverlight or the game-centric XNA APIs. Butwith Silverlight and XNA both silently cancelled deep withinMicrosoft?s ever-reimagined corporate hulk, the move to avariation of WinRT means that Windows Phone is starting overagain. That mean more work for developers who, let?s face it,haven?t really had much incentive to adopt this platform in thefirst place.

Interesting piece. I wasn’t aware just how big a change, under the hood, Windows Phone 8 will be.

As for time running out, I don’t think that’s quite Microsoft’s problem. I see no reason why, if they stick with it, Windows Phone couldn’t take off eventually, even after a few years of slow sales. One of the things that has made the mobile market so vibrant is that people buy new phones frequently — often every two years — and there’s relatively low friction to switch between platforms. Just because Windows Phone 7 hasn’t made a significant dent in the market doesn’t mean Windows Phone 8 is similarly doomed.

But can not is different than will not. The iPhone succeeded because consumers demanded it. Android succeeded because the carriers pushed it. Windows Phone has neither the iPhone’s consumer demand nor Android’s carrier support. Something has to change there.

My advice to Microsoft would be to go after Android, hard. Make Windows Phone the carriers’ best friend. Target your advertising on BlackBerry holdouts and dissatisfied Android users. Position Windows Phone as the alternative to the iPhone.

?

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A Speech Therapy App For Learning How To Express
Colors

RWH Technology has released an update for SpeakColorsHD, a speech therapy app designed to help children with special needs, such as autism or Down syndrome, learn how to speak simple sentences using colors and photos of objects. The update includes more types of sentences, the ability to use your own photos, support for iPad retina display, an improved default male voice and a new, female default voice. SpeakColorsHD 2.0 is available for the iPad.

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RateThis for Apple iOS Devices - A New Type of
Social Media

RateThis! Update Makes Crowd Sourcing on the Go Even Easier. The latest update, v1.5 has just been released by CookieJar Solutions, LLC for iOS devices including facebook login, Google Search, Profile Pictures, and Dynamic Tags. RateThis! is an application that harnesses the power of crowd sourcing to facilitate better and easier decision making. Want to know how popular your viewpoint is or need help making a decision? Well RateThis! is here to help you decide.

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