The Daily coming to Android tablets this spring?

By Joanna Stern posted Feb 23rd 2011 6:11PM Been sick with jealousy over all those people reading The Daily on their iPads? Well, it looks like that could all end some time soon if AllThingD's PKafka has heard correctly. Apparently, News Corp's tablet-only magazine / newspaper will be heading to Android this spring (or some time in Q2). Considering the team has gotten quite a bit of help from Apple on the development side (word is Apple also rushed to help them fix some of the early bugs) and was the first to use Apple's new subscription service, that does seem a bit quick, but we're certainly not complaining about more apps coming to those Honeycomb tablets. We just hope the random crashes and slow load times are fixed by then.

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Samsung Captivate update to Froyo pegged for tomorrow, February 24th (update: HTC Aria update coming 'very soon')

By Chris Ziegler posted Feb 23rd 2011 11:32AM One false alarm is bad enough, but two would be positively evil, wouldn't it? We're cautiously optimistic that Samsung and AT&T are serious this time about posting the Captivate's update to Android 2.2 starting tomorrow, another step in Sammy's long, drawn-out road to getting all of its promised Galaxy S upgrades out the door. We're sure owners are going to appreciate some of the simple pleasures in life that Froyo (and Gingerbread) owners have come to take for granted like being able to move apps to external storage... and it's all just hours away. Can you feel the excitement?

Update: in an official Facebook video just posted, AT&T mentions that it's already in the process of testing a Froyo upgrade for the HTC Aria as well -- and it should be coming "very soon."

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Windows Phone 7's copy and paste update now coming in March?

By Chris Ziegler posted Feb 10th 2011 12:47PM If you don't have a Windows Phone 7 device, you may have assumed that first major update with copy and paste support had been released to end users by now -- and we wouldn't necessarily blame you. If you do have a Windows Phone 7 device, however, you know how very untrue that is... and the latest rumors suggest that you won't be on track to get it this month. To be fair, Microsoft never promised that we'd see the update on handsets in February in any official capacity, but rumors at one time had suggested it'd happen; of course, they also suggested January, so you see how that goes. Anyhow, both Neowin and ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley are liking March 8 as a possibility, citing the difficulties in getting carriers and manufacturers on board for a coordinated launch of a firmware update that they're all accustomed to having more control over. Since early last year, Microsoft had said it'd be controlling platform updates pretty tightly -- certainly more tightly than in the disjoint Android world -- and we can imagine that takes a little bit of adaptation for the likes of LG and Samsung. Anyhow, here's hoping everyone's up to date on the 8th, eh?

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In-App Purchasing Finally Coming To Android; Disney Brings Tap Tap Revenge To Take Advantage

Today at their Honeycomb event at the Google HQ in Mountain View, Google had a lot of information to share. First, they gave a demo of the new Honeycomb features. Then they shared the new Android Market Webstore. And then they had an announcement to make that a lot of people have been waiting for: in-app purchases.

Android engineering director Chris Yerga noted that developers that use their in-app purchasing SDK will be able to sell virtual goods and the like in their apps. And one of those developers who has been waiting for a while for this is Disney Mobile. Google has been working with them to get an important game of their’s ready for such a launch: Tap Tap Revenge. Yes, the game that has had over 50 million downloads is finally coming to Android.

Disney Mobile’s Bart Decrem took the stage to show off TTR and a few of their other apps. He also showed off how in-app purchasing will work. Decrem noted that some 25 million songs have been downloaded inside of TTR thanks to in-app purchases (on the iOS platform, of course). And he said that they were given the latest Android in-app code just five days ago, so it was very simple to implement.

One thing to note is that the feature won’t launch until the spring, though Google is giving the SDK to developers now to get them ready. Yerga promised a launch by the end of this quarter.

Related:

Honeycomb Is The First Shot Fired Along Apple’s Bow

Here’s What Pulse Will Look Like On Android Honeycomb

Google Unveils Android Market Webstore. It’s Already Live!

Android Honeycomb Livestream Is Happening Now

Live From Google’s Android Honeycomb Event

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So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9

We’ve already done a full breakdown of Google’s clarification of their H.264 pullout today. But buried in their post is another interesting nugget worth highlighting by itself: WebM plugins are coming shortly for Safari and IE9.

Yes, plugins.

This is both humorous and terrifying on a few levels. First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google’s, Mozilla’s, and Opera’s preferred codec for that standard, we’re right back to plugin land! Why don’t we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?

Here’s Google on the matter:

Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9).

In other words, they’re going to try to get Safari and IE users hooked on WebM by working around Apple and Microsoft. It’s an attempt to create a standard by way of plugin. Again, ugh.

And while somewhat interesting, it’s unlikely to work. And it’s a dangerous move away from working together on standards and instead is likely to piss off Apple and Microsoft.

Generally, plugins suck because they’re not standards. Even ubiquitous ones like Flash aren’t everywhere. And that creates headaches for web developers and surfers alike. There will never be a truly unified web with plugins. Even plugins backed by Google.

Update: Google has this to say in response:

The HTML

That’s a bit obtuse, but as I read it, that sounds as if Google is trying to say that the WebM plugin more of a “half plugin”. When I asked if that was a fair way to think about it:

Haha, yeah, a ‘half-plugin’ is one way to think about it. There are plug-ins that add non-standard capabilities to a browser that web developers can make use of but then their code is non-standard and reliant on that particular plug-in. This is not the case here. The HTML standard

So it’s a standard-compliant plugin. But still a plugin. Also, does this mean Apple will make a H.264 Chrome extension next? I’m only half-kidding.

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New Storefront Coming for Tablet-Based Magazines [REPORT]

After some disappointing initial sales, magazine publishers are looking to offer their own digital storefront for tablet-based magazines, just as Apple is set to announce a subscription model for tablet and iPad-based magazines, according to two separate reports.

According to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Next Issue Media, a joint venture between five media companies, will launch a service for distributing digital publications on tablets. The story quotes Morgan Guenther, NIM’s chief executive, who adds that NIM will likely go live with two titles from its four magazine owners — Conde Nast, Hearst Corp and Meredith Corp — by the summer.

The offerings could include versions of newspapers from News Corp, the fifth member of the consortium. The service will initially be Android-based, but eventually will be platform-agnostic. The main benefit to publishers, according to the article, is that they would be able to recognize current print subscribers and offer them special deals.

Meanwhile, Adweek reports that Apple is close to announcing a magazine subscription model for the iPad. The story quotes an unnamed publishing executive who says, “People are pretty confident” that Apple and magazine publishers have ironed out an agreement. Until now, iPad-based magazines had only been available as single copies.

The move comes as publishers report weak end-of-the-year sales for the iPad editions of their magazines. Vanity Fair, for instance, sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from 10,500 for its August issue. Wired’s digital edition sales fell from 100,000 in June to 22,500 in October and November. The lack of a subscription option in the App Store is often cited as a cause for their collective decline.

Since single-copy prices of $3 to $4 are seen as a barrier, the notion of a “Hulu for magazines” has been bandied about for some time. One sticking point is that magazine publishers want to handle subscription and pricing themselves, without going through iTunes.

Image courtesy of Digital Trends

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Sexy, Super-Thin Samsung Displays Coming to CES

They’re thin, unusually attractive, and some are remarkably flexible. Yes, supermodels, but also Samsung Mobile Display’s next-generation video screens, debuting next week at the Consumer Electronics Show.

While they won’t be available on smartphones or HDTVs yet, Samsung’s two prototypes will be flaunting some impressive tech, according to GizMag. The smaller of the two is a 4.5-inch flexible display that’s just 2mm thick, and it can be curled up like a Fruit Roll-Up, winding up into the diameter of a McDonald’s drinking straw.

The larger of the two displays won’t be flexible, but the 19-inch prototype rocks a mind-boggling resolution that’s four times higher than your garden-variety HDTV. What would you do with this transparent video screen that still lets light shine through even when it’s turned off?

These two screens are the first examples of the next generation of Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) technology. The displays have a super-thin organic layer of luminescent material that uses less energy and delivers higher contrast and better color than conventional LCD displays. Non-transparent versions are commonly used now in mobile devices, and big-screen varieties are on their way to a home theater near you.

Sony’s offered a display with an earlier generation of the technology for the past three years, but the steep $2,500 retail price (you can get it for $1800) for the Sony XEL-1’s 11-inch screen is a tough sell. Even though it’s not cheap, I can tell you from firsthand experience that its little screen has unmatched color saturation, contrast and sharpness. Sony’s good at this technology, showing the most impressive 3D screen I saw at last year’s CES, a super-sharp and bright 24.5-inch prototype.

Didn’t we see something like this in science fiction movies? It won’t be a fantasy for long — as soon as display companies perfect their manufacturing techniques, economies of scale will take over, bringing prices for these fantastic displays down to a reasonable level. When will these screens become ubiquitous? My guess: Give them three years, and huge, ultra-flat and maybe even transparent screens like this will be commonplace.

Check out the enlarged teaser pic below:

[Via Gizmag]

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Google: Chrome OS Still Coming This Year (It Just Might Be In Beta Form)

There’s a lot of hoopla right now that Google’s Chrome OS has been delayed and will miss the stated release date of “this year”. Much of this is based off of the comment that Google CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at Web 2.0 Summit, in which he said that Chrome OS would be available sometime in “the next few months”. So I asked Google today if they were still sticking with the “later this year” availability of Chrome OS — the answer I got? An enthusiastic “yep!”

But just in case, I decided to follow up and ask if that meant an actual shipping product was coming or some test version of the OS? The answer there was much more murky. “We’re not going into details at this point,” is what I was told.

Looking over the code issues in the Chromium OS forums, it looks as if work is still progressing to knock out a lot of late-stage bugs before the OS can be released. Many of these bugs are UI-related, but several seem much more serious, as well. That said, there are a few indications that a “beta” release of the OS may be drawing near. As you can see here, there are only six bugs labeled as “ReleaseBlock-Beta”. And almost all of them are related to the UI of buying a 3G plan from a Chrome OS-powered netbook. There’s also a “ReleaseBlock-Nominate” list, which features 38 bugs.

There are other indications that Google is removing certain features that contain “show-stopping bugs” in order to get a beta out there.

So, if I had to guess, I would bet that we’ll see some sort of Chrome OS beta launch in December. But that will disappoint many people, as we were originally told that ChromeBooks (Chrome OS-powered netbooks) would be here in time for the holidays. Unless some vendors are willing to ship a very beta product, that’s probably not going to happen.

But maybe there is hope. All About Microsoft’s Mary-Jo Foley says she talked to Google recently about the OS:

I had a chance to ask the Googlers about Chrome OS  recently, and was told that a preview version of Google OS is still going to hit this year and be available in test form on several new form factors.

Of course, she also notes that “Google, like Microsoft, is not going to have a viable iPad competitor available in time for holiday 2010.” But Google is already distancing itself from the talk that Chrome OS is meant for tablets. At the same Web 2.0 Summit talk which featured Schmidt’s comments above, he also said that Chrome OS was meant for keyboards, while Android was meant for touch.

That said, there’s no denying that ChromeBooks and iPads are very likely to eventually go head to head in the market simply because both will likely cost around the same amount of money. And despite Schmidt’s comments, Google has been thinking about Chrome OS in the tablet space as well.

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