Mac convert FLV to iMovie, import FLV to iMovie
Mac

post from prMac on 17 May 2012 10:12:00 PM. © prMac

MacMediaConverter announces Pavtube HD Video Converter for Mac provides an useful solution for Mac users to convert FLV to iMovie supported formats and import FLV to iMovie on Mac. It owns powerful conversion functions which allows you get high quality output within fast conversion speed. Pavtube HD Video Converter for Mac not only can convert FLV to iMovie, but also can convert FLV to many video fomats and audio fomats like MKV, MPG, AVI, WMV, VOB, 3GP, MP3, AAC, FLAC, MKA and more.

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Final Nestination - the new look of the good old
game

post from prMac on 17 May 2012 08:10:00 PM. © prMac

Ronville Group is proud to announce the release of their new arcade games for iOS devices - Final Nestination and Final Nestination HD. In these games player needs to apply all his skills and attention to help birds to get to their homes safe. Birds are coming randomly from different places behind the screen. The task is to land as many birds as possible. Note, that birds should not collide with each other. The game has the Achievements system. The more birds you land - the higher rating you get

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Twitter Is Tracking You on the Web

post from Daring Fireball on 17 May 2012 08:04:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Dustin Curtis:

Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button ora hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It istransparently watching your movements and storing them somewherefor later use. Right now, that data will make better suggestionsfor accounts you might want to follow. But what other things canit be used for? The privacy implications of such behavior by acompany so large are sweeping and absolute.

The other implication is that every website you visit that includes “tweet this” buttons or <iframe>-embedded tweets is enabling Twitter to track you on the web.

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Verizon: You can keep unlimited — if you
buy your own phone

post from Apple on 17 May 2012 06:03:04 PM. © Apple

Verizon Wireless apparently isn?t done talking about its controversial plan to phase out “grandfathered” unlimited data plans for smartphone users. It issued a statement to The New York Times Thursday, detailing exactly how the policy would be implemented. What it boils down to is this: You can keep unlimited, but don?t expect Verizon to subsidize your device.

Here?s the full statement as published in the Gray Lady?s Bits blog:

Customers will not be automatically moved to new shared data plans. If a 3G or 4G smartphone customer is on an unlimited plan now and they do not want to change their plan, they will not have to do so.
When we introduce our new shared data plans, Unlimited Data will no longer be available to customers when purchasing handsets at discounted pricing.
Customers who purchase phones at full retail price and are on an unlimited smartphone data plan will be able to keep that plan.
The same pricing and policies will be applied to all 3G and 4GLTE smartphones.

What that means is that you can probably cling to your unlimited plan from now until the end of time, like some old codger that refuses to give up his party line. But Verizon isn?t going to make it easy on you. The people who like unlimited data tend to be the people who like high-end smartphones, and since Verizon will no longer cut them deals when they upgrade to newer and better devices, they?ll be on the hook for full sticker price. I?m not sure if you?ve seen the prices on a brand new unlocked iPhone lately, but they ain?t cheap: $650 to $850 depending on the model.

The odd thing is, depending on how they?re priced, Verizon?s new shared plans might actually wind up saving a lot of current unlimited customers money. For instance, if you?re in a household with two smartphones both grandfathered to unlimited, you?re basically paying $60 a month for data. If Verizon keeps its same pricing structure in place you could get 2 GB to share for half the monthly cost, plus whatever per line charges Verizon chooses to charge.

The larger majority of U.S. smartphone users consume less than 1 GB of data a month. There are still plenty of people who use their unlimited data plans to the hilt ? many of them GigaOM readers ? and they?re going to hate this policy change in the very cores of their beings. But my bet is that a lot of people currently on unlimited plans might benefit from switching over to shared data. We?ll have to see the details of Verizon?s shared pricing, though, before we can say for sure.

Buffet image courtesy of Flickr user Wesley Fryer

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How Yahoo Botched Its Acquisition of Flickr

post from Daring Fireball on 17 May 2012 06:03:02 PM. © Daring Fireball

Lengthy, detailed treatise by Mat Honan for Gizmodo:

There’s a difference between a missed opportunity and a completefuck-up. When Yahoo failed to capitalize on Flickr’s socialpotential, that was a missed opportunity. But if you want to seewhere it completely fucked up, where it just butchered Flickr withdull knives and duller wit, turn on your phone and launch theFlickr app. Oh, what’s that, you don’t have one? Exactly.

Flickr could have — should have — been to mobile photography what Instagram has become.

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http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-internet

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Baidu Cloud Smartphone

post from Daring Fireball on 17 May 2012 05:03:06 PM. © Daring Fireball

Kaiser Kuo, writing for Baidu Beat:

Chief among the Cloud-based services that Baidu Cloud offers,Baidu will provide every purchaser of the handset with 100 gigs offree personal storage through Baidu Netdrive. This will allowusers to capture multimedia content and upload it instantly to theCloud. In addition, the handset will include Baidu Music, BaiduMap, Baidu Mobile IME (input method editor) and other mainstreamapplications. It will also include the Baidu Cloud Store, withaccess to a huge range of applications. Additionally, the BaiduCloud Smart Terminal platform provides mobile data monitoring,pre-pay credit recharge, and many other convenient services.

So it’s an Android-based phone, with every Google app replaced withan equivalent “Baidu” app. Plus 100 GB of cloud storage. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s interesting.

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http://beat.baidu.com/?p=5209

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New U.S. iPad activations move inland

post from Apple on 17 May 2012 04:03:50 PM. © Apple

Two months after the new iPad’s debut in the U.S, a study shows that the device is beginning to appear in a wider geographic footprint beyond mainly wealthier, coastal states. Last month Apple’s new iPad accounted for 9 percent of all iPad activations, and this month it’s up to 13.5 percent, according to new data from Chitika Insights published Thursday.

Similar to last month, Hawaii and California lead in new iPad activations, accounting for nearly 18 and 16 percent, respectively. But Nebraska is a surprise No. 3. A big part of that isn’t due to your regular gadget consumers, but one of the state’s public education initiatives, which includes a 1-to-1 iPad program for students, according to the report.

You can see the other top seven states (and a district) for new iPad activations in May in the chart below:

Credit: Chitika Insights

But it’s not just Nebraska. There are other mainly rural — and less populated — states whose citizens are also scooping up the latest iPad. According to Chitika:

Nebraska?s adoption numbers in this second month, in addition to high adoption rates in states like Virginia, West Virginia and Alabama, indicate that rural states cannot be broadly labeled as technology laggards. Those residents are now pushing technology trends, often in greater numbers than their East and West-coast counterparts, rather than following them.

This kind of trend is exactly what needs to happen for Apple to continue to grow its customer base. The company can’t just sell new iPhones and iPads every year or every other year to the same early adopter types. By expanding through new industries — education, healthcare, transportation, etc. — the iPad is bringing Apple as a company into new territories that the Mac, at least at this stage in its life, never could.

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Lenovo Drops Classic Keyboard on New ThinkPad
Laptops

post from Daring Fireball on 17 May 2012 04:03:48 PM. © Daring Fireball

The end of era.

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-thinkpad-laptops/

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Scotland Yard Released for iOS

Ravensburger's cult board game classic launches today. Mister X is at it again. The world famous criminal has disappeared into the streets and alleys of London's nightlife, and it's up to the detectives of Scotland Yard to find him before he gets away yet again. The gameplay see's players choosing between playing as the detectives, or as Mister X himself. The detectives attempt to corner or catch Mister X as he travels through London, either on foot, by taxi, train, or bus.

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Survey says: Apple customer service a secret
weapon

Tragedy struck just after 8 p.m. ET last Wednesday. Bounding down my apartment?s outside steps, I stumbled slightly, and in what resembled one of those slow-motion sequences you see on film, my iPhone 4 went flying out of my hand and over a balcony, landing three floors below with a plasticky smack and spray of glass shards.

You could say I was shocked, stunned and horrified. To clear a few things up: No, as I told my inquiring editor, tequila shots were not involved. Yes, I realize it?s just a phone. But I don?t make a habit out of carelessly destroying expensive things — especially when I?m so close to the end of my AT&T two-year contract and looking forward to a no-penalty upgrade to a new phone circa, say, October.

I’ll jump forward to the end: this is a happy story. I walked out of the Apple Store in Center City Philadelphia at 7 p.m. the following day with a brand new iPhone 4. But the journey was very impressive considering the level of service I received for a product that is not a refrigerator or pricey household appliance. Remember, we?re talking about a phone. (Note: I did not disclose my profession to the Apple Store staff for obvious reasons. Nor do I think every customer does or would have the same experience I did — your mileage at the Genius Bar may vary.)

Apple is famous for customer satisfaction — it scores tops among cell phone owners and computer owners, according to the American Customer Service Index. It’s probably no coincidence that high customer satisfaction scores – and offering professional and prompt technical help goes a long way towards ensuring satisfaction — are happening at the same time as the historic expansion of Apple?s business and the ascendance of its stock price.

After my Genius Bar appointment, Apple sent me its standard follow-up customer survey asking me about my experience. And since I write about Apple, I figured I?d share my answers here, in survey form. I was asked to rate my satisfaction with various aspects of Apple’s service on a scale of very dissatisfied to very satisfied.

Overall, how satisfied were you with your in-store repair experience?

Very satisfied. The morning after the fateful accident, I walked into the Center City store without an appointment. I was immediately greeted and told to come back for the next available time slot at the Genius Bar in 20 minutes. When I returned, I waited about a minute and 30 seconds before my designated Genius, Dan, walked up.

That wait was the only thing about my experience that was short — but we?ll get to that in a minute. Despite a somewhat complicated situation due to a failed iCloud backup, I was consistently updated on what was going on with my device. And the employees acted like they cared about solving my problem. Customer service isn?t necessarily the most rewarding job, so it?s gratifying when an employee understands that your presence means there is a problem and that getting it fixed is important. (Apple has just over 34,000 retail employees, with about 100 assigned to each store. Horace Dediu at Asymco calculated that Apple retail sales employees make from $9 to $15 per hour, but Genius Bar workers can make up to $30 per hour.)

Overall, how would you rate the professionalism and technical ability of the store employees responsible for your repair?

Very satisfied. This was somewhat of an emergency situation for me — it?s hard to get work done as a reporter when your only phone is unusable for calls or apps you might be writing about. The Apple Store employees made me feel like getting a new iPhone right away was a priority for them.

They also were very straightforward with me. They made sure I knew what my options were from the start: I could use my AT&T upgrade for a new iPhone 4S, which would start my two-year contract over again (no thanks), purchase a new iPhone 4S off contract for $500 (eek); or, if I left my broken device with Apple, they?d replace my same model with a new iPhone 4 for $149. I chose the latter.

They also let me know that this is fairly routine. Dropping a phone three stories? Not weird at all — they’ve seen and heard worse. The phone?s screen had a lot of scary-looking shards of glass sticking up from it, and when I apologized for its state, my designated Genius shrugged: ?I have chefs? fingers. I deal with cracked screens like this all the time.”

How many times were you contacted about the state of your repair?

At least 10 times, and I hadn?t even left the store. While my new phone was re-syncing Dan would attend to his other Genius Bar appointments, but he?d continually pop back over to update me on the status of my phone. This went a long way toward making me feel like the situation was resolvable and that they cared about getting me a satisfactory outcome.

Once your repaired product was returned to you, what happened?

This actually wasn?t a simple get-a-replacement-phone-and-resync-it-with-my-latest-iCloud-backup situation. Turns out, after 25 minutes of syncing my new phone, none of my roughly 3,000 photos copied over. This was, you might say, problematic. After some troubleshooting, Dan said iCloud was the culprit: my last iCloud backup had failed. He said I should bring my computer that my phone was synced with in and he?d try again, and made me another appointment later that day.

When I returned with my MacBook Air and my new iPhone, he battled further issues: iPhoto kept crashing, and the latest iTunes backup wouldn?t sync. He tried a few different approaches, and finally ended up finding a solution. This troubleshooting took almost an hour, again, thanks to the sheer number of photos I had on my device. Then once he figured out the fix, it was a least another 45 minutes of syncing.

From the start of the discussion, how long was your interaction at the Genius Bar?

Over the course of two different appointments, I spent just under four hours getting in-person tech support from the Apple Store. While that might sound excruciating, Dan was seriously heroic, never got flustered, and even took time to discuss one of my favorite topics while we were waiting: where to procure Philly?s best pizza. (Osteria on North Broad Street, if you’re wondering.) As someone who works from home or remote locations regularly, it wasn’t really a problem to be nearby the Apple Store all day. But that might be harder for people who have to report to offices.

Plus, when his shift ended at 6 p.m., he found another Genius to check in on me while we waited for my syncing to finish so they?d be sure my problem was entirely fixed before I left the store.

In the end, yes, it took a while, and iCloud has some serious issues to work out. But I left with a new phone, only $160 and some change poorer. And, perhaps more importantly, a lot of customer goodwill — an asset that even the most valuable company in the world can?t put a price on.

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