By Satish |

Sunday, March 7, 2010

• Streetfighter IV for iPhone: Capcom releases official trailer and screenshots
• webOS Gets A New And Much Improved Facebook App
• Palm cranks Pre and Pixi production back up to the normal rate
• Mobclix Compares Android and Apple; Android Devs More Likely To Give Their Work Away
• Uh-oh: Looks like the Nexus One kind of sucks at multi-touch (Video)
• Wish your iPhone was higher in sodium and preservatives? The TV Dinner iPhone case can help.
• Maybe it's horrible customer service that's hobbling Palm?
• Virgin Mobile increases value for prepaid broadband data buckets — $60 for 5GB
• Verizon currently experiencing nationwide data outage

Streetfighter IV for iPhone: Capcom releases official trailer and screenshots   As reported (and following Final Fantasy I and II, which are now available), the App Store will get another hit Japanese video game this month, Streetfighter IV. It will be the first mobile version of the Arcade game that so far was only ported to PS3, XBO360 and the PC. And today maker Capcom released the official trailer and a slew of new screenshots.

webOS Gets A New And Much Improved Facebook App   At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement. Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had "Facebook support" was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that's it. The new app seems much more properly endowed, offering up access to your news feed (with full liking/commenting support), full profiles, people search, photo albums, inbox, events, photo uploading, and more. And of course, it's still fully intertwined with webOS' Synergy system, allowing the user to automatically sync Facebook friends to their relative contacts, complete with profile pictures as caller ID photos. We're just cracking this app open for the first time right this second, but it certainly seems like the fully featured Facebook app that webOS deserves. Update: Added a few screenshots below! Update #2 Some people are reporting that the application in the App Catalog is still the old version. If that's the case for you, try using the App Catalog's built in update feature (Open app catalog, tap the shopping bag on the bottom right).

Palm cranks Pre and Pixi production back up to the normal rate   Oh, February 11th. I remember it like it was just a few weeks ago. A report came out claiming that Palm was halting production of the Pre and Pixi, and everybody panicked. Then it turned out that it was an entirely pre-planned production vacation for the sake of their Taiwanese employees who wanted to celebrate Chinese New Year. Well, that little hiatus is now over. While the company didn't release a press release indicating that the Palm factory lines were fired up again (and why would they?), Palm's VP of PR Lynn Fox told CNBC, "Yes, I can confirm that manufacturing is back up and running." They may be having a hard time selling them right now, but they Pre and Pixi aren't going anywhere just yet.

Mobclix Compares Android and Apple; Android Devs More Likely To Give Their Work Away   Apple and Google are engaged in a fascinating battle of mobile OS's. Among other things, they're duking it out on patent infringement, developer relations and carrier support. Lines are being drawn, and everyone's taking sides. That begs the question: what's the difference between the App Store and Android Market for developers? And how does this affect their bottom line? Mobclix, a TC50 Company, just released a report comparing the Android Market to Apple App Store. They are a mobile analytics and advertising platform whose footprint includes over 6,500 publishers including ngmoco, SGN, and NewToy (creators of Words with Friends). The data revealed that about 60% of Android apps are free of charge, compared with 20% for App Store applications. Furthermore, about 20% of Windows Mobile and Blackberry are free as well. It's an intriguing phenomenon and a difficult one to decipher. Are Android developers more inclined to use advertising instead of direct payment to monetize? Or does the more democratic nature of the Android Market make free apps more successful? Another potential explanation is that Android doesn't even allow paid apps in many countries, including Canada, China and India. That may be scaring developers off from the platform. Mobclix's data also showed clear differences between average price of apps in the various stores. While Android and Apple have the largest number of apps, they are also the cheapest: the average paid Android app costs $4.10 and the average paid App Store app is $3.37. In comparison, WinMo apps average at $7.48 and BlackBerry at $8.58. That doesn't necessarily translate into more revenue, but it does mean that the market dynamics of each store are causing different pricing options for developers. Vishal Gurbuxani, CTO and Co-Founder, also shared that Mobclix is nearing profitability and has served over 3.5 Billion ad impressions. By comparison, advertising network AdMob (recently acquired by Google) announced in November that they had served 1.7 Billion impressions by that date. Below is the full presentation, with more interesting data like a comparison of Android vs Apple across all categories (e.g. Books or News):

Uh-oh: Looks like the Nexus One kind of sucks at multi-touch (Video)   Uh oh. On at least a few occasions, Android developers have mentioned to me that the multi-touch sensors on certain Android handsets — especially the Nexus One — seemed a bit.. flaky. I'd had nothing but solid experiences while dabbling with multi-touch in all of the apps I could find that support it, so I chalked it up as a coding error on the developer's part until something a bit more solid came forward. Well, something a bit more solid has just come forward. Our buddy Taylor Wimberly of AndroidAndMe was chatting with Robert Green of Battery Powered Games, who was reporting the same Nexus One multitouch sketchiness we'd heard of previously – but Robert had proof. Robert threw together a simple multi-touch application called Multitouch Visible Test. As the name implies, it makes your multitouch input visible by drawing large circles beneath your fingers wherever the phone thinks they are. It's all pure sensor data right from the phone; there's not any data processing going on here, so there's not a whole lot of room for software bugs on Robert's end. As you can see in the video below, the Motorola Droid seems to handle all of the default multitouch gestures with ease. The Nexus One, however, flounders; while it handles slow pinch-and-zoom motions just fine, it goes all kinds of crazy once your fingers get too close together. The output data gets flipped, reporting your fingers as being in the polar opposite locations of where they actually are. It's somewhat understandable how this bug slipped through the cracks: for standard pinch-and-zoom behaviors, things would seem to behave correctly enough that the difference may not be noticeable. It's a different story with games, however; imagine having to control two things on the screen at one time, and having said things mysteriously rocket off in the wrong direction because your fingers got too close together. Suck. It's not a bug that's likely to come up on a daily basis, but its not exactly trivial – and either way, a bug is a bug. If you have a drink tonight, cheers to the idea that this might be fixable with a software update. Have you ever noticed any multi-touch oddities on the Nexus One (or any other Android handset)? Let us know in the comments.

Wish your iPhone was higher in sodium and preservatives? The TV Dinner iPhone case can help.   I was tempted to just post the photo above with "That is all." as the text – but I suppose that's not very helpful. Looking to fill the needs of the massive "People who want an iPhone slip case, but really, really like TV dinners" crowd, Etsy seller Coolbeans717 has been hand-cranking out these Hungry Man-inspired beauties. The good news: unlike real Hungry Man dinners, using this daily probably won't make you gigantic. The bad news: they're sold out. Fortunately, Coolbeans717 (or "ol' beansie" as we call him [or her] around the imaginary 'Hood) has a few other worthwhile handmade designs if you really want an iPhone slipcover but your heart isn't absolutely set on waiting for the turkey-and-gravy-packed offering above to come back in stock.

Maybe it's horrible customer service that's hobbling Palm?   Dwight "The Houston Tiger" Silverman, like so many tech dudes, likes the Palm Pre and Pixi and, in a way, doesn't understand why Palm is on the rocks. However, he got an email from a reader who described her Verizon experience as sub-par at best. It began poorly: My original salesperson, upon hearing me say I was there for the Palm Pre, immediately mentioned that they were running a special on the Droid. I said terrific but I'm here for the Pre. The salesman finally got one out for me but no one at Verizon had any idea how it worked, how to set it up, or even how the screen functioned. It took Verizon over 3 hours just to the Pre "set up", apparently because "the guy" who knew about the Pre was not there. I lovingly took my Pre home. And got worse. Generally, it feels like Verizon and, to a degree, Sprint, have lumped WebOS in with the rest of the feature phones OSes. It's not flashy enough to be an iPhone killer nor is it popular enough to beat Android in the mindshare game. It's a floater, friends, and we all know where those eventually go.

Virgin Mobile increases value for prepaid broadband data buckets — $60 for 5GB   Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go prepaid 3G data service made a splash last summer by offering no-contract plans that came close to competing with two-year offerings from the likes of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The major drawback was that the top plan, at $60, only allowed for 1GB of data usage, whereas you'd get 5GB on a contract plan. Well Virgin Mobile's just given everyone a big reason to go month-to-month by upping the data allotment of its $60 plan to a full 5GB. It's increased the data buckets on two of its other, lower-priced plans as well. The base $10 plan still gets you 100MB of data that must be used within 10 days, but the $20 plan now gets you 300MB instead of 250MB and the $40 plan now gets you 1GB instead of 600MB. As previously reported, Broadband2Go uses Sprint's EVDO Rev. A network. Mobile Broadband Service [Virgin Mobile]

Verizon currently experiencing nationwide data outage   Did you look at your Verizon Droid minutes ago and wonder why you hadn't gotten any emails within the last few minutes? I did. I just marked it up as the start of a good day, but apparently I was exactly wrong. Verizon's data network is down and my Gmail inbox is full. Damn. There's no ETA as of yet and New York seems to be fine. Your best bet is just to hang tight and let the VZW folks do their jobs. They want the network back just as much as you do.