Google Earth iOS Update Brings Street View, Optimized Search Results

The Google Earth app for iOS has received an update today, bringing some features from Google Maps into the app. The new update, version 7.1 brings Google Street View functionality to the app, which up until now has only been available on the web version of Google Earth and the Android Google Earth app. Search results have been optimized to make searching for locations easier, and directions now let users obtain transit, biking and walking directions in 3D. The app also has a window that can be pulled up from the bottom of the screen, dubbed the “tour guide” which pulls up virtual tours. The app also lets users browse layers which include roads, borders, places and photos. Also available are real-time earthquake maps, planes in flight, hiking trails and city tours.

The iOS Google Earth app is available now on the iTunes App Store for iPhone users running iOS 4.3 or later.

Telefonica To Give Windows Phone 8 An Extra Push To Try To Dilute Android, iOS

Microsoft continues to throw money down the Windows Phone well, perhaps buoyed by signs its ongoing marketing and platform support efforts are shifting the needle a few fractions. Today more evidence — presumably— of Ballmer’s money-throwing commitment to make its smartphone OS stick: carrier Telefonica has announced it will be collaborating with Microsoft to “promote and foster sales” of Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft has been shelling out to pay developers to port their apps to WP8, as it plays app catch-up with the rival Android and iOS ecosystems. It’s unclear exactly how much cash Redmond has paid out on this, or on WP8 marketing in general, but it’s currently running a promotion for which developers can get $100 per app submitted up to a maximum of $2,000 each if they submit a stack of apps.

Flagship apps — such as Angry Birds — are likely to have commanded much larger payouts to be ported over of course. WP8′s lowly marketshare means it’s likely not worth such developers’ while to support the platform. Or at least not without the sweetener of a substantial cash incentive.

Meanwhile Instagram, another big name app that still stands aloof of the Windows Phone ecosystem, has apparently been offered millions of dollars to port the app by Microsoft and Nokia. For whatever reason, it’s one app WP8 still lacks however.

Returning to the Telefonica-Microsoft love-in, the pair say this new “enhanced” marketing effort will initially run for a year, and will be targeted at six markets where Telefonica carrier brands operate: namely the U.K., Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. These markets appear to be ones where Microsoft’s OS has already managed to generate a little marketshare momentum. According to earlier Kantar data, for the three-month period ending February 2013, Windows Phone had a 6.7% share in the U.K., 6.8% in Germany and 5.9% in Mexico, for instance.

Telefonica declined to answer questions about how much money — its own and/or Microsoft’s — will be poured into this enhanced marketing effort, saying the information is confidential. The only question it would answer is which Windows Phone device is the biggest seller in most of its markets — and that device is the Nokia Lumia 920. Microsoft also declined to comment further.

It’s possible Microsoft is bankrolling the entire enhanced marketing program itself, although Telefonica says its motivation in helping to promote WP8 is to diversify the devices it offers to consumers and “improve the current balance of mobile operating platforms on the market, encouraging it to be more diverse and less of a duopoly”. For duopoly read: Android and iOS.

Why would a carrier want to encourage more diversity? Surely that just means creating more work and outlay for itself as it has to train its staff to sell different types of phones? There are plenty of reasons. With Android so dominant, power over development and direction of the mobile landscape is increasingly concentrated in Google’s hands. Carriers would obviously prefer they hold more of the cards, so that they can push their own over-the-top services to build the new revenue streams they need to as their traditional moneyspinners (talk and text) continue to decline.

Plus, if most of the phones run the same OS, there’s less incentive for consumers to buy a new device. Pushing customers to switch to something new is arguably a more compelling upgrade sell for carriers to foist on their customers now that smartphone hardware has become so similarly capable. A different OS — and WP8 does certainly look different to the two market leaders — gives them something new to try to pull the punters in. This is especially important in saturated markets like Europe where smartphone penetration (and Android usage) is so high.

Telefonica said it will be working with suppliers and WP8 mobile makers to “ensure the availability of high-quality devices” and “make their commercial offering available throughout the duration of this enhanced marketing effort with Microsoft”.

Smartphone market figures for Q1 released by analyst IDC yesterday named Windows Phone as now the third biggest smartphone OS in Europe, behind Android and OS, with a two percentage point increasing taking its share from 4% in Q1 2012 to 6% in Q1 this year. Despite being third, it is still very far behind, with Android hugely dominant — with a massive 69% share — while Apple’s iOS share shrunk to a fifth (20%).

Microsoft licenses 'Age of Empires' for iOS and Android, but downplays further releases

Microsoft is bringing its games to iOS and Android, beginning with Age of Empires sometime in 2013, reports Japan’s Nikkei business daily. The ports are coming courtesy of mobile developer KLab, which is licensing the games from Microsoft for global distribution. Nikkei calls it a possible indication of a turning point in the gaming market, speculating that the move could even affect the mobile strategies of competitors Sony and Nintendo.

However, Age of Empires won't be the first time Microsoft has brought one of its games to the iPhone. That honor belongs to Kinecti mals, which came out back in 2011. Microsoft hasn’t abandoned the platform either, releasing Twisted Pixel’s Ms. ’Splosion Man just three months ago. And while fans might be clamoring for iOS and Android ports of Halo,KLab isn’t exactly a top-tier mobile developer. It lists a dozen native titles for iOS and Android on its website, none of which inspire much confidence in its ability to tackle a big project.

What’s more likely to be happening is that Microsoft is making a little money on the side by licensing one of its under-utilized franchises to a third-party developer. And while Nikkei reports that more collaborations between KLab and Microsoft will be forthcoming, Redmond doesn't sound quite so enthusiastic. A Microsoft representative tells us that "some reports included incorrect information about additional Xbox Live-based games on iOS and Android but there are no further announcements beyond Age of Empires at this time.
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Apple releases second iOS 7 developer beta, now with iPad support

Apple has just rolled out the second beta preview of iOS 7 to developers. Unlike the first release distributed shortly after WWDC, beta 2 has been optimized for the iPad in addition to iPhone and iPod touch. Aside from a few screenshots from Apple and unofficial simulator hacks, we've yet to get a good glimpse at how Apple's revamped mobile operating system will look on the larger device — until now. 9to5Mac has posted screenshots of the new beta running on Apple's tablet. An all-new Voice Memos app is also revealed in the images.

With the help of a transition guide outlining the design philosophy behind iOS 7, app makers will now be able to see how their iPad software looks before the public update reaches consumers this fall. Despite welcome additions like Control Center and the removal of skeuomorphic UI elements, Apple has faced some criticism for design and iconography choices seen in the first beta, though its work on iOS 7 is by no means complete.

WWDC 2013: 50 billion iOS apps downloaded, $10 billion paid to developers

Apple as always started out its WWDC 2013 keynote with some interesting numbers about the company and about the App Store. The big number this year was way up in the billions: iOS users have downloaded 50 billion apps from the App Store. Additionally, there are over 900,000 apps in the App Store, and 375,000 of them are optimized for the iPad.

How are those developers doing? Pretty well in general terms. Apple has paid out a total of $10 billion to developers since the App Store opened. $5 billion was paid out just in the last year alone. According to Apple, that’s three times more than all other platforms combined. When looking at app download share by revenue, iOS takes 74 percent, Android takes 20 percent, and the collective category of “other” takes 6 percent.

Some other notable stats: there are 575 million registered iTunes accounts most of which have credit card information added. That’s up from the 400 million announced at WWDC 2012. Plus, last year, there were 650,000 apps in the App Store compared to over 900,000 today.

These are pretty good numbers so far. Apple does usually save the biggest ones for big keynotes. WWDC 2013 is only just beginning so stay tuned!

Photoful Improves On iOS 7′s Photo Gallery With A More Open, Gesture-Based App

Photoful, a new mobile application which is the rebranding and relaunch of the earlier app known as PhotoSocial, is hoping to attract iPhone users who want the Photos experience the new iOS 7 mobile operating system will offer…and then some. As with iOS 7′s re-imagined Photos app, Photoful will also sort your photo collection into smart groupings like iOS 7′s “Moments,” but it will allow users to do more, too, including photo tagging and advanced editing, printing, and sharing with several third-party services, as well as navigating through, selecting, and discarding photos using gestures.

As with PhotoSocial, which somewhat mimicked the original Apple Photos app, but then added capabilities on top, Photoful takes its inspiration from the redesigned version of iOS. It has the iOS 7 look-and-feel, making it one of the first to transition to the new mobile experience Apple recently debuted at WWDC.

Often, it’s apps like this that eventually blaze the trail for Apple’s own native applications, which is a precarious position for a startup. For this model to work, the company has to continually stay ahead of whatever Apple is building itself. (Case in point: the new iOS 7 Photos app has taken its own “inspiration” from a number of photo app makers, including Everpix, Moment.me, flayvr, Tracks, Cluster, Story, Flock and more.)

That being said, Photoful establishes itself as a fairly robust alternative to the native Photos app. And with some of the options it will add in the near future – like support for other third-party services such as Flickr and Tumblr and photo printing – it will get even better.

“You need to start with beating what they have today and rounding out the corners,” explains Photoful founder Jeff Bargmann. “[Apple's Photos app] is a closed ecosystem – that’s the big problem I see here. No other application can rope into this, and that’s a position that Apple isn’t really going to move from…That’s an opportunity for us.”

Bargmann’s background is in designing utilities that augment the features and functions available on the native OS. He previously created Windows desktop utilities like Stardock’sFences and ObjectDock, 1UP Industries’ Bins, and was project lead on Stardock’s Impulse, which later sold to GameStop. Afterwards, he wanted to expand his skill set, and learned iOS development to build PhotoSocial, now Photoful.

Among the new app’s long list of extras, including Aviary-powered filtering and editing tools, a collage builder, a slideshow maker, Postagram export, and more, the best feature is simply how you interact with the app: gestures. Not only do you edit album titles with a tap (which is a fairly common behavior), you can also slide your finger across rows of photos to select or unselect them. Plus, you can pull photos off to one side of your screen to delete them or off to the other side to share them via email, SMS, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The gestures are really natural and intuitive, unlike some apps where you struggle to learn the new interactions. Here, you immediately just get it. And as soon as you do it, you realize that Apple’s Photos app is lacking.

Being able to tag photos, too, is another great addition – especially for those who find the tagging paradigm, and the streams of related content that it allows for, to make more sense that having to place photos into folders or manually create albums.

In the future, Bargmann plans to extend the Photoful app to sync and share with other services like Flickr, Tumblr, and messaging clients like WhatsApp, as well as partner with other developers to offer users different photo editing options, whether that’s through in-app integrations or directing users to third-party apps that could be purchased and launched from within Photoful.

First alleged iOS 7 controller revealed in leaked image

Kotaku has obtained an image of what it claims is the first "Made For iPhone" controller. Purportedly made by Logitech, the controller looks similar to the guidance images Apple released when it detailed the new iOS 7 controller API. It features what appears to be a circular D-pad, four action buttons, and a pause key. The guidance images also called for either two or four shoulder buttons to be included, but it's difficult to see from Kotaku's blurry image if the controller has any shoulder buttons at all, let alone how many.

Logitech's controller is likely to be one of many to launch at around the same time as iOS 7. Third-party controllers have been around for iOS devices for a long time, but their success has always been limited by the small selection of supported games. With the launch of iOS 7, expect manufacturers to refresh their products to support the game controller API in the hope of being certified by Apple. iFrogz, which announced its Caliber Advantage controller back in January, has already confirmed that its product will support the new API.

iOS 7 for iPad screenshots show Control Center, full-screen Notification Center

A number of screenshots showing what iOS 7 will look like on the iPad have been leaked by Twitter user Sonny Dickson. The images, which were obtained using the simulator feature of Apple's XCode developer platform, don't throw up too many surprises. The design mimics what we've seen of iOS 7 so far, with a refreshed icon set, new core apps, and the addition of a Control Center that's accessible with a swipe up from the bottom of the screen.

The leaked images do reveal a couple of unexpected changes — assuming Apple doesn't make any drastic interface changes before iOS 7 is released. The redesigned Notification Center now takes up the entire screen (just as it does on the iPhone), rather than a small portion of the screen as in iOS 5 and 6. The Control Center, which Apple didn't demo for iPad at its WWDC keynote, is confined to a slice at the bottom of the display — the iPhone version covers more than half of the screen. Other changes revealed include sparser Maps, Contacts, Spotlight search, and Settings interfaces. There is the possibility that Apple just doesn't have the iPad layout nailed down yet, and the simulator is simply stretching the iPhone layout in places, which would explain the appearance of a "flashlight" function in Control Center. 9to5Mac is hosting a set of screenshots from the simulator, which also show a rearranged version of Safari.

The screenshots also highlight one of the reasons that Apple hasn't released a beta version of iOS 7 for iPad. Some of the interface elements, such as the Control Center media controls, overlap, while icons such as Calendar are completely different to their iPhone counterparts. We expect to see many more iPad interface leaks as Apple continues to refine the OS in the lead up to its fall release, so stay tuned.

A brief primer on Microsoft Office for iOS rumors

We can now safely say that rumors that Microsoft was working on a version of Office for Apple's iOS platform weren't false. They were just early.

But boy has it been a long road to Friday, when Microsoft made it official by releasing its Office Mobile for iPhone app -- which is officially dubbed "Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers" in the iTunes Store.

Reports that Microsoft was aiming to bring a version of its productivity software to Apple's mobile platform date all the way back to February 2010, just a few weeks after the the iPad was unveiled in San Francisco, and more than a year and a half after the debut of the App Store. Since then it's been a trickle of vague feature lists, misfires on release dates, and increasingly honed denials and no-comments from Redmond.

Here's a quick timeline on when this all started, and the turns along the way.

February 2, 2010
In a since-removed interview, a senior Microsoft product manager tells U.K.-based technology site T3 that the company is "looking at" bringing Office to the recently-announced iPad. No specifics on a timeline or feature set are mentioned.

Apple Introduces iOS 7

We heard it would be flat. We heard it would be black and white. We heard that it would be a totally different experience.

It is. iOS 7, the latest version of Apple’s flagship mobile operating system, is here, and it’s almost entirely different from the versions that came before. Gone are the skeuomorphic designs and 3D effects, replaced by Sir Jony Ive’s “flat design.” Rumors had been flying for weeks about the new OS and now it’s here and it is, at least at this early reckoning, a massive change for the six year old operating system.

First, we must remember that Ive, Apple’s industrial designer now in control of software following the departure of Scott Forstall, isn’t a believer in interfaces that copy real-world objects. In the past, making the Notes app look like a legal pad or the calendar app look like a Moleskine calendar notebook were part of the iOS design philosophy, as ingrained in the OS as “Slide To Unlock.” All that is gone now.

Are you ready for a whole new world?

NEW LOOK:

• iOS 7 has a new font leading the way, which seems to be a sort of Helvetica Neue Ultra. It’s very skinny, clean, and it was hinted at in the iOS 7 banners that went up for WWDC yesterday.
• Instead of white bars on a black background, Apple will now tell you what kind of service coverage you have with five little dots, which are white and grey depending on how strong the signal is across a translucent background.
• The lock screen is changed for the first time in iOS’s history, with no more shine top or bottom bars for slide to unlock or the clock. Instead, Slide to unlock is translucent above the background image.
• Default app icons are now flatter, but not quite flat, just as predicted.
• Jony Ive’s hand has had its way with iOS notifications. The notifications panel isn’t laced with dark grey linen anymore, but actually has a very flat look to it. There is a today view, that lets you see friends birthdays, upcoming invitations, calendar, stocks, and a quick look at tomorrow.
• The apps all seem to have a white base, except for the stocks app which has a black background and the weather app, which shows motion in the background to convey the current weather.
• The keyboard is more white, than grey, with a translucency that lets you see what’s underneath the keyboard.

NEW FEATURES

CONTROL CENTER

• Control Center is a pull-up tray that is available in your lock screen.
• You can adjust brightness, volume, and other settings including Wifi, Airplane mode, rotation lock, or Bluetooth.
• The Control Center even offers a flashlight, along with tabs for music, camera, and other quick-access apps.
• The Control Center takes on the environment it’s in, so if you swipe up while you’re in mail, it will have the same blue and white coloring under that translucent panel.

MULTITASKING

• iOS 7 lets you multitask between all third-party apps with much better battery consumption.
• You can double-tap the home button to enter into multi-tasking mode, just like always, but the interface for multitasking has been revamped. It appears to offer live previews, but Apple wasn’t clear about that.

SAFARI

• Safari opens straight into full screen mode now, with the option to pull down to bring up the search bar at the top.
• The search field has been improved to be a unified smart search field, which lets you have access to all your favorite websites with a single tap.
• Tabs come with a totally new interface, scrolling in a vertical carousel, and there are no longer any limits. In other words, you can have as many tabs as you want, as opposed to just 8 like before. Swipe a tab off to the side to throw it away.
• The new Safari is integrated with iCloud keychain from OS X Mavericks, and also comes with parental controls.

AIRDROP

• You can share sharesheets with other people by simply tapping their name. No NFC required.
• Airdrop supports iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad Mini

CAMERA AND PHOTOS

• The Camera app lets you swipe between your various camera types, such as panorama or HDR so you can quickly take a pic instead of fumbling around with settings.
• Photos marks the first update to the photo gallery on iOS since it was introduced.
• You can search based on date, and location, within the photos app.
• Instagram must be flattered — Apple has introduced photo filters so you can add a little professionalism to the picture.
• Users can share via AirDrop, iCloud photo-sharing, as well as shared Photo Streams.
• You can even share video with iCloud photo-sharing.

SIRI:

• Siri has a new voice! It sounds similar, but also weird. You can choose a male or female voice, if you like. Voices include languages like French, German, and other languages “over time.”
• The visual UI has also been upgraded, with a sound wave going along the bottom.
• Siri has also been integrated with settings, letting you tell her to turn on bluetooth, or lower the screen brightness.
• The company has also added support for Twitter, Wikipedia, and shows web search results direct from Bing.

IOS IN THE CAR

• iOS in the Car depends a lot on Siri.
• It puts the iOS homescreen on the screen of your car, and lets you search for directions, listen to music, etc.

APP STORE

• You can now search for apps based on location. In other words, search for apps by the Louvre and see a lot of French museum apps.
• The App Store also automatically updates apps for you in the background now. Hallelujah again!

ITUNES RADIO:

• Apple has finally introduced the much-anticipated iTunes Radio, which gives a Genius-like experience to the entire 26-million title iTunes catalog.
• You can see the full list of songs on each station by clicking history, with purchase and preview buttons built right in to send you to the iTunes store.
• iTunes Radio also lets you customize each station by clicking a star to show that you want more of this type of music.
• iTunes Match users will get an ad-free experience, but others will be able to use the app for free with a few audio and text ads.

ACTIVATION LOCK:

• This is for those of us who have had an iPhone stolen.
• If a thief steals your phone and tries to turn off Find My iPhone, they can no longer turn the device back on without your iCloud password.
• Users can also block messages and calls from other users

Rumor: Is This iOS 7 Running On An iPad?

Apple has yet to officially release iOS 7 beta on the iPad, which has caused speculation into what the new version of iOS will look like on the device. A new video from a Russian YouTube user Rozetked has released a video today, which shows an iPad running iOS 7 “alpha.”

Since Rozetked does not disclose how he got iOS 7 running on the iPad or any other details of the build,  we can’t be sure of the video’s authenticity. The video is interesting however, and provides us with a clearer picture of what we may see when Apple officially releases the iOS 7 beta for the iPad. The video shows the Notification Center and Control Center in proportion, and several of the native app icons resemble those of the iPhone iOS 7 beta release.

While a release date for iOS 7 on the iPad is still unknown, we will surely be seeing more news of its release in the near future.

What are your thoughts on Rozetked’s video? Does it look legit to you? Let us know.

Yandex Takes Another Swipe At Google In Russia, Launches Yandex.Browser On iOS And Android

Yandex, referred to as the “Google of Russia” for its dominance in search and subsequent extension into cloud-based services like maps, online storage and apps, today is unveiling another service that will give it a stronger foothold in the fast-growing mobile market: it is debuting a dedicated mobile browser, which will feature a single box for URLs and searches, voice recognition features and more. But Yandex is still stopping short of launching a full-blown, Android-style mobile platform to complete the picture.

There are “no plans” to develop a mobile operating system, a spokesperson tells me. “It doesn’t make sense for us. It is a totally different business. Anyway, we [now] have everything for our own mobile ecosystem on Android: search, apps like Mail and Maps, 3D UI (Yandex.Shell), app store and now the browser.”

Yandex.Browser for mobile comes on the back of Yandex last year launching a dedicated desktop browser of the same name in October 2012. That browser now has around 8 million users in Russia, or a 5%-6% market share.

The mobile version will launch, the company says, “later this year.”

The move comes at a time when Yandex is already a strong player in mobile. Not only are its maps and other apps already popular among iOS and Android users (and it has a deal with Apple to help power its native mapping product on iOS devices in Russian-speaking countries, as part of the latter company’s gradual distancing from Google), but Yandex already holds about half of all searches on Android devices. This is a significant metric and perhaps more significant than where Yandex is positioned right now on iOS: Android is the platform where it concentrates a lot of its energy because it is the fastest-growing in Russia, across a range of low-cost and high-end handsets.

“According to our stats Yandex have about 49% of searches on Android, but for sure we want more,” the spokesperson notes. It has around a 60% stake in online search in Russia, with other big players including Google.

While Yandex has focused, and continues to focus, a lot of its efforts to date on Russian-language markets and to a lesser extent Turkey, new mobile services, where the playing field remains open has been an opportunity for Yandex to test out and export more services in English. In that vein, it’s launching Yandex.Browser for mobile in both Russian and English-language users.

(The ill-fated, but full-of-potential Wonder app in the U.S. is one example of how that hasn’t always worked, though.)

Like the online browser, the mobile browser is built WebKit (Blink on Android). And like Chrome, it lets users incorporate both URLs and searches into a single box that Yandex calls “Smartbox.” This will tie a user into using Yandex search first on the browser.

Interestingly, although Yandex competes fairly fiercely with Google in Russia and other markets where Yandex is established, outside of it the search giant becomes a major partner. The English version of the mobile browser, Yandex notes, will have Google as its default search (except in China, where Baidu is the default. “This is because we want to make the browser really convinient for people outside of Russia, CIS and Turkey,” the spokesperson says. Users can also set the default search to either Bing or Yahoo in the English version.

These are not commercial deals, but if and when Yandex gets more users on the browser, “we will think about some alternative ways to monetize it, like revenue-sharing models for search engines and websites preset on browser’s launch page.” In home markets, the browser’s main revenue stream will come from search ads.

Other features to come will also include “integration with social networks, synchronization between mobile and desktop versions of the browser and improved user experience,” the company says. And as you can see in some of the screenshots in this post, it looks like there will also be some integration of voice-based search and potentially other features, too.

iOS Platform Of Choice For Shoppers, All But Biggest Companies Focus On iOS And Android

     

Apple retains the top spot when it comes for uses making actual purchases on their mobile devices, according to a new Forrester report. iOS shoppers are around 30 percent more likely to make a purchase on their device, and about 15 percent more likely to do product research on their smartphones and tablets than Android users, the survey of 58,000 U.S. respondents found.

But despite the discrepancy, companies are still targeting both platforms en masse. The survey also found that 99 percent of ebusiness professionals surveyed during the study intended to launch either a native or hybrid iOS app by the end of 2013, and 96 percent were also targeting the same for Android. Beyond Goole and Apple, however, there’s a very steep drop off in interest, and only larger companies with big budgets are really looking further afield at companies and platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

That’s because around 41 percent of ebusiness pros have only $500,000 or less to spend on their mobile budgets, and 56 percent have less than $1 million. That money can only go so far, and still pales in comparison to general marketing budgets, and even budgets devoted to general web-facing property. This alone is a prime reason why cross-platform solutions will continue to succeed, even as developers debate the merits of cross-platform technologies like HTML5 vs. native tools.

And while the market appears unified between Apple and Google, that actually belies a fair amount of fragmentation that occupies sufficient developer time and resources within those two larger camps, Forrester points out. Developing for either iOS or Android is a much more resource-intensive affair than it once was, despite efforts made by both companies to encourage users to upgrade and to make it easier to build software compatible across OS versions and device particulars.

In some ways, fragmentation is actually a boon to both Apple and Google in terms of helping them maintain their platform advantage. The more resources developers have to devote to catering to those top two platforms, the fewer they have available to spread out on a third or fourth horse, to the continued detriment of smaller players like BlackBerry and Microsoft. It’s easy to paint fragmentation as a problem, and in terms of developer time and spend, it definitely is, but holding on to the market lead may be an unintended consequence for the mobile top dogs.