AT&T Offering 50% Off Smartphones Purchased Online Until June 30th

AT&T is offering 50% its devices when purchased online with a two-year contract, from now until June 30th. The deal comes attached to another offer, which is an in-store trade-in program which applies a $100 discount when a customer trades in a device no more than 3 years old. Android Centralpointed to the fine print in the offer, which is as follows:

“Online orders only. Receive 50% off instantly on smartphones between $.99 and $199.99 only. New 2-yr wireless agreement with voice (min $39.99/mo) and data (min $20/mo) plans or Mobile Share plan (min $85/mo) req’d. Trade-in not req’d for instant discount but can trade-in eligible devices online to receive AT&T Promotion Card.”

So there you have it, any smartphone with a new two-year contract purchased online will receive a 50% discount. So if you’ve been waiting to grab one of the year’s hottest smartphones such as the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S 4 or iPhone 5 on AT&T’s network, now is a great time to purchase one. Hurry though, the offer expires on June 30th.

Google Launches Cube Slam, An Open Source Pong Clone, To Show Off The Power Of WebRTC And WebGL

Google today launched Cube Slam, an open source pong clone that you can play against the computer or a friend in the browser. That by itself wouldn’t be all that exciting, but Google created this game to show off the power of WebRTC, Web Audio and WebGL.

For most people (or at least for developers),WebRTC is now synonymous with plugin-free video conferences in the browser and Cube Slam uses this to show you a live video and audio stream of your friend on a virtual screen while you’re playing.

Maybe more importantly, though, the game also uses WebRTC’s RTC Peer Connection and RTC Data Channel – two features most developers are probably not aware of – to send audio, video and all the “bits and pieces that keep the game in sync” back and forth between the two machines.

Google claims that Cube Slam is the ” first large-scale application to use RTC Data Channel, which provides an API similar to Web Socket, but sends the data over the RTC Peer Connection peer-to-peer link.”

BlackBerry 10 Jam kicks off in Belgrade, Serbia

Today I’m attending BlackBerry’s developer event in Belgrade, Serbia, which is organized by the company’s Balkan developer network. Even though the Canadian company was losing market share in the last few years, they’re eager to tell everyone they’re a different company now, one that has a brand new platform to compete in today’s market.

We had a chance to watch the live demo of select BlackBerry 10 features, including the sexy-new UI called Flow with the “Peak” preview capability, TimeShift camera mode (licensed from Scalado, as far as I’ve understood) and the BlackBerry Hub all-in-one messaging/alert center. The company’s representative also reminded us that their platform is more secure than anything else on the market, and has even got certification from the German government.

As developers are looking beyond “two default platforms,” iOS and Android, BlackBerry is looking to attract them to its eco-system. And so does Microsoft, and the Canadian company is doing its best to make it as easy as possible for developers to choose BlackBerry 10 over (or in addition to) Windows Phone.

To that end, BlackBerry is investing a ton of resources to help developers not only port existing mobile apps to BlackBerry 10 but also make brand-new apps. In that sense, individuals and companies looking to make applications for the platform can visit dedicated forums, ask assistance from BlackBerry tech centers, get training and certification, as well as app exposure if their “work” uses all of the elements of the platform.

But that’s not all. The company also gave away more than 12,000 Dev Alpha BlackBerry 10 devices, 20,000+ Playbooks, and 7,000+ Z10 Limited Edition devices to developers to help them test their apps. All this produced impressive results, driving the app count from 20 in June 2012 to more than 100,000 apps in April 2013!

Finally, we were also able to get a hint about BlackBerry’s future plans, which go beyond mobile and include not only computing devices but also (connected) cars and other in-house appliances.

As I’m finishing this text, the company’s Aaron Ardiri is giving as an overview of developer tools. The launch break will follow, after which we’re off to developer sessions…