Posts tagged Brings
Foursquare Brings More Search Refinements To Mobile Apps
Feb 9th
Calling it “personalized search for the real world,” Foursquare brought its mobile Explore functionality into its recently redesigned PC website roughly three weeks ago, and added some new search capabilities in the process. Those capabilities included the ability to filter places…
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Latest Google Search Revamp Brings Opportunities For Local Businesses
Feb 6th
Recently, Google announced (and Search Engine Land intensely covered) what is being described as the most significant revamp to date of their basic search tool. To sum it up from the start, the changes will likely provide local businesses with the ability to merge aspects of their search…
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Seven changes Search plus Your World brings to PPC – Econsultancy (blog)
Jan 23rd
 Noobpreneur.com |
Seven changes Search plus Your World brings to PPC
Econsultancy (blog) Search plus Your World impacts PPC just as it impacts SEO. Let's look at seven reasons why your PPC strategy might need changes due to Search+ Brand bidding has always been controversial. The important rule in any brand bidding scenario is to test and … SEO Strategist's 3 Cost Effective SEO Techniques for Small Creative Businesses Undeniable Advantages of the Internet for Businesses |
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Skyhook Brings Location-Based Services To the Kindle Fire
Jan 11th
One of the biggest detriments to Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is that it does not support location-based services. This was likely a choice from Amazon to leave GPS hardware out of the device to cut down on costs. The lack of location services on the Fire greatly hinders what kind of apps can run on the device. One company has figured out a way around the Fire’s restrictions and is bringing its navigation app to the Fire.
HopStop is a metropolitan navigation app that gives door-to-door directions for pedestrians, cyclists, taxis and mass transit in over 200 cities in the United States and Canada. Without location services on a device, HopStop’s app is basically useless. Enter location provider Skyhook with a simple fix to a complex problem.
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Skyhook can bypass the lack of native location hardware in the Kindle Fire because it does not use GPS or other device components. Skyhook is built off a software-only Wi-Fi Positioning System that exists outside of device requirements.
What the Skyhook SDK does is provide an external pipe for location-based services into the hardware of a device. This works perfectly for a device like the Fire that does not have any native functionality nor cellular data connectivity that would be an easy away to implement location.
Skyhook does not have a business relationship with Amazon. The company focuses its attention on the developer ecosystem as a means of growth and an alternative located-based services option.
“We have no business relationship with Amazon, merely with the app developers. They add our location engine to their app and submit it to Amazon for approval,” Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan said in an email to ReadWriteWeb. “As long as the app meets their guidelines, then it is approved and published. With HopStop, we now have 2 app partners live in their store and fully approved.”
For developers looking to publish apps to the Amazon Appstore, the technical requirements of the Fire force many apps to change certain aspects of the codebase, mostly concerning native device access. Amazon has no qualms with pushing Web apps or sites instead of native Android apps in its Appstore. For instance, the native Facebook and Twitter apps are not represented. Amazon uses a shortcut to the mobile websites of each. Part of the reason for that has to do with the permissions that each of those apps require, such as location.
It is not likely that behemoths like Facebook and Twitter will change how they handle location specifically for the Fire. But that does not mean that smaller companies with individual apps cannot take advantage of Skyhook’s SDK to reach the Fire. That is what HopStop is doing.
It has been well documented that Skyhook is fighting and ongoing legal battle with Google over being excluded as a location services provider on Android devices. Morgan and Skyhook have been forced to find a different route to get Skyhook onto Android devices without Google’s official support.
“We don’t have a great relationship with Google because of them banning our device partners (Motorola and Samsung) from baking us into their Android phones,” Morgan said. “So we work with app developers to help them directly get better location using Skyhook. It takes longer but we aim to get on every Android device one way or the other. As of today we are on over 25 million Android phones thru app developers.”
Currently, the Android SDK only supports versions 2.1 Eclair and 2.2 Froyo in addition to the Kindle Fire. Since the Fire is built off of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, official support should roll out fairly soon. Morgan said that Skyhook plans on supporting all versions of Android for developers.
“We have about a hundred of the top Android developers who use our Android Location SDK, but we are just getting started with targeting the Fire,” Morgan said. “Most developers are just waking up to that platform and are rushing to get their apps into the amazon store overall. We are reaching out to all the location based app developers and letting them know they can launch for the Fire if they add the Skyhook Location SDK. We have gotten tremendous response on that and expect to announce about a dozen app partners in the next couple of months.”
Are you excited for actual, functional location on the Kindle Fire? Do location-based services make a device more attractive or is it something that you do not miss until it is gone? Let us know in the comments.
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Google News Brings Back Search The Web Option
Dec 22nd
In June, Google dropped the option to search the general web index from the Google News search box. Google redesigned the Google News search box to add the ability to search the general web index. Here is a screen shot: As you can see, you can click on the last result in the suggestions, you [...]
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Amazon Brings Kindle Newsstand to iPad, Updates Kindle Fire
Dec 22nd
Amazon updated the Kindle app for iOS today, giving iPad users the ability to access publications from the Kindle Newsstand. Amazon’s Newsstand offers over 400 full-color publications to Kindle Fire users. Apple’s own Newsstand offers more app-like experiences from many of the same publishers.
In addition to the 400 magazines and newspapers, the iPad app can also now display “print replica textbooks,” which are more like giant PDFs than interactive applications. All iOS devices, not just the iPad, now support the Send-to-Kindle feature, allowing users to send documents to the device by email. They can also open PDFs from email or the browser in the Kindle app.
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The Kindle Fire itself is off to a good start, at least in terms of sales. It’s the fastest growing tablet since the iPad. Amazon has also released the first over-the-air update for that device, fixing some of the performance problems.
The Verge has a nice hands-on review of the new Kindle Fire update with photos and video.
It’s a compromised device, and it’s positioned as a service, not a dedicated hardware product like the iPad. Rather than making money off the device, Amazon wants to put the device into as many hands as possible in order to make money on the content.
The Kindle app for iOS is Amazon’s extension of that service onto Apple’s platform. Apple’s own Newsstand has given publishers a major bump since the launch of iOS 5 in October. The Kindle app is popular on the iPad for e-books, though, and Amazon hopes to divert some attention away from Apple’s Newsstand with today’s update.
Download Kindle for iOS from the iTunes Store.
Do you read on a tablet? Which one do you use?
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New Solar Investment Brings Google’s Clean Energy Portfolio to Nearly $1B
Dec 21st
Google is investing $94 million in solar farms built by Recurrent Energy in the Sacramento, California region. This brings Google’s total clean energy investments to over $925 million, with over $880 million in 2011 alone.
The Recurrent Energy -…
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Google Brings Japan’s Tsunami Damage to Street View
Dec 17th
Google has released a compilation of StreetView images that cover 44,000 kilometers of the region devastated by Japan’s March 11th tsunami and earthquake. Users can view before and after footage as if they were right there, standing on the streets…
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Red Hat 6.2 Brings Better Resource Management
Dec 6th
Red Hat has taken the lid off Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2, Though it’s a modest update, Red Hat has a laundry list of improvements to KVM and the kernel that will make it easier to set resource limits and improve performance for virtualized systems.
Last week I spoke to Tim Burke, VP of Linux engineering for Red Hat to get a look at what’s coming in the release. Aside from the usual collection of security patches and bug fixes since 6.1, Burke says that 6.2 is emphasizing performance, scalability and manageability. Naturally, Red Hat is also including support for new hardware in this release as well.
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In RHEL 6.2, Burke says that it will be easier to use cgroup resource controls to control CPU consumption, memory consumption, and I/O consumption. This is important for a lot of shops that need to ensure that virtual machines don’t go over their limits. Burke says that it’s also usable for bare metal applications, and for hosted cloud providers like OpenShift.
OpenShift and RHEL 6.2
It’s unclear how much Red Hat’s OpenShift effort is driving features in RHEL 6.2, but Burke did say that Red Hat is learning quite a bit from developing OpenShift and is already using 6.2 to host its PaaS. For example, Burke says that OpenShift makes heavy use of Linux Containers and “really stresses” logical volume management (LVM). “It’s so dynamic, and we want it to be as rapid as possible to deploy [on OpenShift].”
Linux Containers don’t get as much attention as KVM, but they can be used in cases where a full virtual machine may not make sense. With 6.2, the features for managing Containers are available via a GUI or using libvirt. Note that Containers are considered a “technology preview” in 6.2, though. Burke says it’s “not generically suited for a full spectrum of workloads,” but says it is being used heavily in OpenShift.
He also says that OpenShift “heavily uses a lot of the tool stack” that ships with RHEL, such as Perl, Python and Ruby.
RHEL 6.2 is also a major component of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 which is in beta right now.
Burke says that RHEL 6.2 has made it easier to configure resource policies. If you’re using RHEL 6.2 with RHEV 3.0, Burke notes that a lot of the resource policy management is now exposed via GUI tools that ship with RHEV – though those are not available just with RHEL 6.2.
Additional Updates
On the device side, RHEL 6.2 has added support for new Infiniband devices, a bunch of new 10GbE network cards, and better utilities for configuring Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
It’s worth noting, of course, that the cgroup and KVM features are not exclusive to Red Hat. The features are being developed in the upstream Linux kernel, and they’re available to any vendor that’s using the Linux kernel. Red Hat may be one of the first to market with these features in an enterprise Linux distribution, but the kernel/KVM improvements aren’t exclusive.
For a full list of improvements, see Red Hat’s What’s New Guide (PDF) for 6.2.
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YouTube Redesign Brings Google+ To Facebook’s Front Door
Dec 1st
The YouTube redesign we got a sneak peak into last month is now going live for all users. It has been reborn as a social and customizable media site, letting users customize their lists of channels right on the front page, as well as share to Google+ and Facebook.
It might be surprising to see Facebook integration so prominently on YouTube, with Google+ is trying to make a name for itself, but think of it this way: Facebook is huge. YouTube is huge. Google+ is not yet huge. What better way for Google to introduce Facebook users to Google+?
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The new YouTube got a lot of design attention. No more simple boxes on a white background. Google wants lots of eyeballs on these pages. It is realigning its media relationships and striking new content deals around the world. YouTube has been mainstream for years, but the new YouTube will redefine the term “mainstream media.” Disney movies, music videos, Rebecca Black and cute puppies all make YouTube what it is, and the new design encourages users to watch and share all of it.
Read more about the redesign on the YouTube blog.
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