IndieVoic.es Hopes To Become Kickstarter For Independent Media

The Internet wasn't kind to media. Huge media corporations have managed to transform their businesses, for the most part, but independent media, often playing a vital role in emerging countries, are seriously threatened by the lack of available funds.

IndieVoic.es hopes to change that. Founded by Sasa Vucinic, V Media Ventures CEO and a former Editor-in-Chief of B92 (Serbian media corporation which played important role in the overthrow of Milosevic), the project is essentially a crowdsourcing platform focused on providing necessary funding to independent media in developing countries.

Just like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, IndieVoic.es uses a familiar concept. Media owners can create campaigns and specify the amount of money they need to run their venture. Contributors from all over the world can fund their campaigns in return for valuable prizes (ranging from a postcard to a dinner with former Prime Minister of Thailand).

However, crowdfunding isn't the only way IndieVoic.es aims to help independent media raise money. By announcing no-interest loans and mini-loans for 2014, the platform will enable its users to choose the best funding option for their media. Think of it as a mix between Kickstarter and Kiva.

"Our goal is not just to fund independent media. We want to engage the audience and democratize the ownership of media. It is the only thing that hasn't changed about this industry in the past 20 years" stated Vucinic in an interview for Netokracija.

And he should know a thing or two about financing media. Vucinic co-founded Media Development Investment Fund which he ran for over fifteen years. During that time, MDIF has raised 123 million dollars and funded more than 220 independent media projects all over the world.

Much like MDIF, IndieVoic.es supports different media outlets ranging from investigative journalism reports and local radio stations, up to specialized blogs covering various topics of interest. Although anybody can submit a project, only those which are curated and checked will actually be eligible for a campaign. We are ensured that this is necessary to maintain a certain standard of funded media.

Despite all this, IndieVoic.es is not your ordinary crowdfunding platform. Unlike Kickstarter or Indiegogo, this service is not looking to cash-in on their revenue any time soon as it is specifically trying to operate as a non-profit.

"Our goal is to break-even beginning 2016. If our revenue is higher than expected, we will definitely lower our initial cost per campaign", Vucinic added.

Although media isn't every investor's cup of tea, “there are those who might find interesting opportunities in specialized media covering a range of interesting subjects”, stated Vucinic. Is IndieVoic.es leading the revolution independent media owners have been waiting for? It sure seems like it.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Q_-hFvlptck/

A VC And Olympic Hopeful Taps Indiegogo With A Game To Raise Funds For Young Athletes

Paul Bragiel, the batshit crazy awesome VC who has been training for months in the Arctic Circle to compete in the Sochi Winter Olympics, has a side charity project up his sleeve.

After seeing dozens of other younger Olympic contenders struggle to raise funds for training, he felt he needed to do something to help out. Some friends over at Belarusian and Lithuanian gaming studio On5 offered their talents pro bono to develop a game called Team Paul Skiing.

It's a beautiful, little side-scroller that takes a player through Bragiel's training as he skis in Finland, which is where he's done the bulk of his preparation. Then it shifts to Colombia, the country that gave Bragiel citizenship to compete on behalf of its Olympic team. And finally it ends in Sochi, Russia, where the Olympics will be held next year.

They set a low goal of raising $10,000 in the next seven days, and half of the proceeds will go toward different youth sports foundations in Finland and Colombia while the other half will go toward game development. But they hope to raise somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000.

Bragiel, who started i/o Ventures out of San Francisco, decided earlier this year to realize his lifelong dream of competing in the Olympics.

But there were many hurdles. For one, he didn't have a sport. Then, he was also pretty old for an Olympic hopeful at 36 years of age.

But he's hacked his way so far. After considering everything from curling to the luge, he settled on classical cross country skiing, which is a more traditional Winter Olympic sport that has more lenient rules around qualifications.

Then he secured citizenship in a warm, tropical country that is less competitive for winter sports - Colombia.

Now he's in the middle of qualifying races. To make it to the Olympics, he must be able to finish five qualifying races where he's not more than 10 minutes behind the world's top cross-country skiier - no hard feat. He's competed in his first qualifying race already, which was a miss. But he's definitely not deterred. There are plenty more to come.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/B0oOv97Fp5U/

When building a company, it’s the destination, not the journey

Platitudes are a dangerous way to build a company.

What passes today as start-up wisdom can be attractive, even seductive to new entrepreneurs. We have witnessed the creation of a sub-industry of how-to advice on creating the next tech blockbuster. Don’t get me wrong: A lot of what’s written or spoken about is incredibly valuable, but, out of context, of it can be dead wrong, even dangerous.

The Wining Viable Product (WVP)

I am a fan of the Lean Startup approach. If you are creating a consumer app in a new category, the idea of minimum viable product (MVP) is an ideal way to get something out, test it, and then either move forward with conviction or fail fast. If you are going to take on a large technology or Internet company on their home turf, then you should be thinking about the winning viable product (WVP), the one that will give you a multi-year lead over incumbents.

Make no mistake, if you are just a bit better than the incumbent, you will likely flame out early. Try messing with a giant’s profit sanctuary: A market leader will fight, discount and outright stretch the truth about pending capabilities while they hustle to catch up. Moreover, their installed base will usually wait for them if the gap and obvious benefits are not wide enough. Switching costs are one the most powerful forces in the tech universe.

If you want to take a market away from a multi-billion dollar player, to paraphrase former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, enter a conflict with clear intent and overwhelming force. Since you cannot manifest this early on with market reach — sales, marketing, deep customer relationships, etc., — then your product must make the decision a no-brainer for customers. WVPs are your weapons of mass disruption.

It’s a sprint, not a marathon

When a shift in the market occurs, the “execution machine” must be in high gear if you want to translate early mover advantage into something sustainable. Prior execution machines such as Data Domain gained disproportionate benefits,particularly in the first few years of creating a new market, by pushing the pedal closer to the metal as sales took off. You could argue this underlies the early (and continued) success of Salesforce.com, Facebook, FireEye, and even Snapchat (yes, I said Snapchat!).

This means your product both must hit its target market with force and then you have to hit the afterburners to get to as many paying customers as possible. Build your company, product, and go-to-market like you are a participant in the Hunger Games. This takes a lot of confidence not only of product fit, but market readiness. Moreover, if your company will take some to monetize, then you need a big war chest. This is why we are seeing larger A and B rounds.

It’s OK to go home with a different date

There is nothing smarter than being cheek-to-jowl with your early customers. Do your job well, and you will have them for life. Building a company, though, is not about going to the prom.

Sometimes your initial customer group is actually a poor fit for your product strategy (e.g., you were thinking about a vertical insertion in retail and healthcare is a more attractive segment). You have to get past an emotional conflict, like a teenager leaving the dance with a different date. An entrepreneur must not fall into the trap of Shakespeare’s Othello: “one that loved not wisely, but too well”.

It’s a zero-sum game

Some companies build their strategies around being in the “herd,” one of five to 10 players in a market with a hope of getting acquired. That is a failed path for your company and your investors. Most value accrues to top one or two market share players.

As Will Farrell’s infamous racecar driver character, Ricky Bobby, kept repeating: “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

Alan S Cohen is the Chief Commercial Officer of Illumio and a technology veteran working on his fourth startup. Cisco and VMware acquired his past two companies, Airespace and Nicira, respectively, for $450 million and $1.26 billion. He serves as an advisor and board member to several technology companies.

via Gigaom http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/zW2BC3sW5O4/

Case Maker Pro will let you turn your photos into iPhone cases in 2014

If you're unhappy with the selection of iPhone cases at your local mall kiosk, maybe you'd prefer to grab a magazine or a personal photo and turn it into a one-of-a-kind accessory. That's the idea behind Case Maker Pro, a gadget that slices any photo to perfectly fit an iPhone 5 or 5s. Using the included clear plastic case and a piece of lamination film, the image gets some protection and security while being strapped to the back of your device.

Case Maker Pro currently has an Indiegogo campaign, but it's a flexible funding effort, so if you pay the $49.00US for the unit, you'll receive it regardless of whether or not the campaign actually reaches its goal. According to its creators, the current prices will double once the Maker hits retail, so if you just have to turn magazine covers into iPhone cases, it might be worth jumping in early.

For those of you who really can't wait, consider a similar product that's already on the market and has overcome some early issues: the frām case reviewed by TUAW in early 2013.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/30/case-maker-pro-will-let-you-turn-your-photos-into-iphone-cases-i/

Review: Animation Desk for iPad

This app goes in the "I can't believe you can do this on a iPad" category. Animation Desk (U.S. $4.99) lets you create freehand animations using a generous set of drawing tools and brushes. If you have any artistic ability at all, you can create animations that look professional. The interface Animation Desk presents looks similar to the tools an animator would use in the physical world. Make your drawing, add a new page and redraw with the changes. You can make really good looking animations for business presentations, for animated e-cards for friends, or just for your own enjoyment. When you're done, you can upload to YouTube or share your work on Facebook.

Other nice features are the ability to add sound effects, and there are multiple frame rates, from 3 FPS to 24 FPS.

I gave Animation Desk a try, and without any drawing ability, I created a passable animation with some moving stick figures. Frankly, it exceeded my expectations. If I have any criticism of the app it is that when you first turn it on you see an animation pad, some icons, and some buttons, but I didn't know what to do first. Happily, there was a drop down menu with excellent help, and some videos, but the app needs help marked on the main screen. Users should not have to search for assistance, as when you first start the app the array of features and icons is bewildering. Animation Desk has some in-app purchases, with things like pre-drawn Xmas elements, but I don't think the add-ons are a necessary requirement.

You can get more info on Animation Desk at the developer website, with some example animations that are pretty impressive.

I'm amazed at what can be achieved with this app. It's bargain-priced, and there is a version for the iPhone as well. Animation Desk requires IOS 5 or greater. There is also a free lite version if you wish to try the app without risk.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/30/review-animation-desk-for-ipad/

Thanksgiving and Black Friday saw record $1.06B and $1.93B in online sales; 15.6% via tablets, 8.6% via smartphones

Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday saw record online sales with $1.06 billion and $1.93 billion, up 18 percent year-over-year and over 30 percent year-over-year, respectively. 24.2 percent of online sales occurred on tablets (15.6 percent) and smartphones (8.6 percent), a record overall increase of 118 percent year-over-year.

The new data comes from Adobe Digital Index 2013 online shopping data, which further broke down the figures to say that iOS-based devices drove more than $543 million dollars in online sales for the two days while Android-based devices were responsible for only $148 million.

Those figures can be broken down further. The iPad was by far the most popular mobile device used on on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, driving $417 million in online sales, while the iPhone was responsible for $126 million. Android-based tablets only generated $42 million in online sales on November 28 and November 29, while Android-based phones generated $106 million.

Across social media sites, Amazon was the most referenced retailer with close to 450,000 posts, while Walmart was a close second. Interestingly, Sony’s PlayStation 4 saw more than 300,000 mentions , driving close to three times more social media traffic on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blogs (including WordPress and Blogger), YouTube, and Reddit than Microsoft’s Xbox One.

Online shopping peaked between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM EST on Black Friday, helping retailers generate more than $150 million in one hour:

“Online shopping data shows that consumers took full advantage of their mobile devices to shop on Thanksgiving Day and ‘omnishop’ while in stores on Black Friday,” Adobe Digital Index’s principal analyst Tamara Gaffney said in a statement. “In an attempt to play every angle possible, retailers poured money into new mobile capabilities by adding Wi-Fi to key stores, expanding mobile app offerings, and optimizing websites for easier transactions from small screens. The results were record online sales driven by tablets and smartphones this year.”

Despite all this, traditional “brick-and-click” retailers outsold their “online-only” competitors at nearly a three-to-one ratio. Adobe’s data for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday is based on the analysis of nearly 400 million visits to more than 2000 US retailers’ websites, with the company estimating more than 70 percent of online sales with the top 500 retailers in the US are generated by companies using Adobe Analytics.

Adobe is projecting that this year’s Cyber Monday will be the largest single online shopping day ever.

Top Image Credit: Hans Thoursie

via The Next Web http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/StAp-i7gJFs/

The sorry state of server utilization and the impending post-hypervisor era

Want to know a deep dark secret in the enterprise? Despite the widespread use of server virtualization, hardware resources in the data center are today tremendously underutilized. When I first discovered this, I was surprised. I had naively thought that virtualization solved the server utilization problem.

But after I reached out to contacts in data-center operations at various companies, I learned that I was wrong. One conversation really stuck with me. I’ll paraphase:

Me: Do you track server and CPU utilization?

Wall Street IT Guru: Yes

Me: So it’s a metric you report on with other infrastructure KPIs?

Wall Street IT Guru: No way, we don’t put it in reports. If people knew how low it really is, we’d all get fired.

While exact figures vary greatly depending the type of hardware being used in a data center, its specific characteristics and the peak-to-average ratio of the workload, low utilization has been widely observed. A few data points from the past five years:

• A McKinsey study in 2008 pegging data-center utilization at roughly 6 percent.


• A Gartner report from 2012 putting industry wide utilization rate at 12 percent.


• An Accenture paper sampling a small number on Amazon EC2 machines finding 7percent utilization over the course of a week.


• The charts and quote below from Google, which show three-month average utilization rates for 20,000 server clusters. The typical cluster on the left spent most of its time running between 20-40 percent of capacity, and the highest utilization cluster on the right reaches such heights only because it’s doing batch work.

“Such WSCs tend to have relatively low average utilization, spending most of (their) time in the 10–50% CPU utilization range. This activity profile turns out to be a perfect mismatch with the energy efficiency profile of modern servers in that they spend most of their time in the load region where they are most inefficient.” – Data Center as a Computer by Luiz Andre Barroso, Jimmy Clidaras, and Urs Holzle.

Efficient hardware is only part of the solution

Most discussions on this topic relate to “Energy Proportional Computing.” My firm has made investments in other data-center companies to attempt to address the performance-per-watt overhead of running servers in their least-efficient operating ranges. Making servers more energy efficient is a noble goal, but the flip side of this coin is to run the machines you already have installed at higher utilization in their more efficient power/performance range. Since it’s a fair bet the numbers achieved by Google are industry leading, I feel safe in concluding that server infrastructure more broadly is still woefully underutilized.

I find this fascinating, especially in light of the broader industry move toward what I call Everything –as-a-Service, EaaS. If I’m Amazon or another, similar provider of raw compute or storage services, my aim is to maximize the amount of revenue I can achieve for every dollar I spend on servers. Each incremental increase in efficiency is either money that flows straight to the bottom line, or cash that can be re-invested in other projects It’s essentially the same for internal private-cloud initiatives. In the enterprise there can be organizational impediments that leads to artificially low infrastructure utilization by these walls are crumbling as well.

At the same time, there are a number of fundamental changes taking place at the hardware level to compute infrastructure. There is tremendous interest from folks like Intel and Facebook in new rack- level architectures that allow for the ability to scale memory and compute independently. The key reason for this is that in many cases, systems run out of usable memory long before CPU becomes an issue.

To be fair, this is often one reason CPU usage is often shockingly low, and measuring CPU alone is far from the whole story. Rack-scale computing; microservers; new levels of the memory hierarchy; low latency ethernet fabrics; and new instruction sets like ARM in the data center are all coming in the next few years. If the best the industry can do in a relatively homogenous X86 world is +/- 10-25 percent utilization, think about how much more complex the problem is going to be with a raft of new hardware options to optimize around.

A post-hypervisor world

While it’s clear that hypervisor-based virtualization brings many benefits to the enterprise, it’s not obvious that high levels of infrastructure utilization is one of them. It’s also possible that we are moving to a post-hypervisor world. The type of container and operating-system based virtualization that has long been available in Solaris and FreeBSD is now in Linux. Hat tip to the team at Joyent who has been preaching this gospel for ages but requiring the use of the Solaris or its open sourced descendants SmartOS, Illumos, OmniOS, etc.

The rapid adoption and popularity of platforms like Docker, a platform to build and managed Linux-based containers is a testament to the interest in alternative approaches. The advantage of this type of model is that it eliminates the additional operating system instances and the associated resources they require. It also simplifies operating system distribution and management. Minimizing the burden of the guest OS or eliminating it all together are the goals of two interesting lightweight operating systems projects CoreOS and OSv. Tying these new pieces of the puzzle together at data center scale are new cluster management frameworks like what Google recently discussed with its Omega project and the Apache Mesos which is now commercially supported by Mesosphere.

This set of new technologies may lay the foundation for the post-hypervisor era in the data center. As has been the recent trend the foundational work and initial deployments have started inside the web scale data centers and then into the open source community. It’s clear that leading edge enterprises are next.

It’s a dynamic time in the data center. New hardware and infrastructure software options are coming to market in the next few years which are poised to shake up the existing technology stack. Should be an exciting ride.

Alex Benik is a principal at Battery Ventures who invests in enterprise and web infrastructure start-ups. You can find him on Twitter at @abenik

via Gigaom http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/PBanfeuERvM/

Caturday: Oona painting on her iPad

By now, connoisseurs of Caturday have noticed that iPads and felines go together. It's almost like Apple designed the iPad for cats, knowing that they'd be attracted by the bright screen and the response to paw touches.

Here we see Oona, a pretty cat owned by a friend of TUAW reader Alan A., working on a new masterpiece while lounging in front of her electronic canvas. While it may look like non-professional art, remember that Jackson Pollock made a career as a famous artist on not much more...

We'd love to see photos of your favorite feline soaking up the warmth of an Apple product, chasing a Magic Mouse, or just being a general nuisance while you're attempting to work on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Please let us know via our feedback page and please remember that your cat photo has to have some sort of connection to Apple or its products. For security reasons we can't accept inbound attachments, so you should host the photo (Dropbox, Flickr, iPhoto Journals, etc.) and send us the link.

Many thanks to reader Alan A. for sharing this photo with us.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/30/caturday-oona-painting-on-her-ipad/

Daily iPhone App: Pick - The Purchase Tracker is a tool for calculating and tracking discounts

Pick is a shopping assistant that'll allow you to track your purchases and calculate your savings. It's a simple, yet effective app to help you make wise buying decisions this holiday shopping season.

Pick allows you to do two primary things while shopping. First, it allows you to enter in the purchase price of an item, apply a percentage discount and then calculate the amount you would end up paying. You can quickly determine whether you should buy the $15 shirt at L.L. bean that is 20% off or the $20 Lands Ends shirt that's 16 % off.

Secondly, the app will keep a running list of all the items you purchase so you can tally up your spending and your savings at the end of a shopping trip. If you are traveling, Pick has a built-in currency converter so you can track how much you spend in both your native and the foreign currency.

Pick is a small app, but useful for discount shoppers. It's also a helpful tool for those who make purchases while they are traveling on business or vacation. Pick is available for US$0.99 from the iOS App Store.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/daily-iphone-app-pick-the-purchase-tracker-is-a-tool-for-calc/

IronSource Announces KudosKits, Allowing App Users To Show Their Appreciation With Money

Israeli company IronSource has come up with a new way for developers to ask their users for money or other forms of support.

Chief Design Officer Dan Greenberg told me that the product, called the KudosKit, evolved from an experiment conducted with the iOS app good weather, which was initially developed by Fried Cookie and distributed by IronSource (IronSource has since acquired Fried Cookie).

Greenberg added that developers are “all struggling to earn money for the work that we're doing,” because for many, existing monetization systems such as in-app purchases have proven to be “very, very hard for them to crack.”

With a KudosKit, instead of requiring users to pay for the app, or for additional content/virtual goods within the app, developers can present them with a screen asking for their support. That can ask users to “buy us a cup of coffee” (make a small donation), Like the app on Facebook, tweet about the app, rate it in the App Store, and more.

In some ways, it's similar to the “tip jar” widgets that you'll see on some websites, but customized for mobile. And with the underlying analytics technology, Greenberg said his team is “100 percent focused on making this work.” Specifically, he said the KudosKits can identify the most effective points in the app to ask for support, direct requests at specific user segments (so loyal users see the message while first-time users don't), and localize the messages in different geographies.

Greenberg said that although the company is only announcing the technology broadly now, six months of early usage are promising, with 700,000 users donating a total of $1.2 million. The KudosKits have supposedly seen an 0.58 percent conversion rate to paid “appreciations”, with an average appreciation size of $2.10.

By the way, IronSource is adopting a similar approach in how it makes money from the KudosKits itself - it's a revenue sharing arrangement, but developers can determine what percentage of the proceeds they give to the company. In Greenberg's words, “We're actually giving the developer the opportunity to decide how much they appreciate our service.”

KudosKits are available for both iOS and Android apps. Interested developers can sign up here.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/nu5UWqq9Vhs/

Gillmor Gang Live 11.29.13 (TCTV)

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Gillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session for today has concluded.



via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/you-etmugxw/

Agent Makes Your Smartphone A Little Bit Smarter

You can't teach an old phone new tricks.

Hah! Just kidding. Of course you can. This isn't 1998.

Agent is an app that aims to make your Android smartphone just a little bit smarter, using all of your phone's sensors to detect what you're up to and tweak your settings automatically. Driving? It'll automatically respond to texts to let people know you're busy, and remember where you parked your car. Sleeping? It'll only let the most important calls through.

Agent is a spin-off, of sorts, of another Egomotion product called "Trigger" (or, as it was once known, "NFC Task Launcher"). With Trigger, Egomotion sells packs of programmable NFC tags which can fire off actions on your phone. Want your phone to silence itself and set an alarm when you go to bed? You'd stick one of their NFC tags on your nightstand, then set up a series of tasks to fire whenever that tag is detected. Want it to automatically launch your favorite music app when you get in the car? Tuck one of the tags into your cup holder.

In time, however, the team realized that many of the most popular use cases didn't really require NFC. Instead of an NFC tag on your nightstand, why not just auto-silence the phone during certain hours? Instead of hiding a tag in a cupholder, why not just detect when the user is connected to their car's Bluetooth? Thus, Agent was born.

Agent takes the core concept of Trigger and boils it down to its essence. Gone is any mention of NFC tags, instead relying on the handset's built-in capabilities - things like its accelerometer, clock, or WiFi/Bluetooth. Gone is the relatively complicated task setup process, with Egomotion instead providing a small set of pre-built actions that they call "Agents".

At the moment, the app's got five different built-in agents:

• Battery Agent: When your battery starts to fade, the battery agent kicks in to irk a bit more life out of your phone. You can tell it to automatically dim your screen, turn off automatic data syncing, or turn off Bluetooth. Once you're plugged in, it'll automatically flip everything back on.


• Sleep Agent: Automatically silences your phone between specified hours, but with a clever white-listing system. You can specify which contacts are allowed to wake you, and allow for repeat (and thus likely urgent) calls to ring through. It can auto-reply to texts, telling the user to reply "urgent" if it's an emergency (at which point, your phone will ring loudly to wake you up). You can tell this agent to only start if your handset is plugged in. That way, it probably won't silence your phone during a night out at the club.


• Parking Agent: Attempts to automatically remember where you've parked your car. By default, it works by detecting your speed; once you've stopped moving over a certain speed for more than a few minutes, it figures that you've parked your car and marks the location accordingly. Of course, doing things like riding the BART might fire off a false positive, so you can tell the Agent to base its logic off Bluetooth connectivity if it's an option in your car.


• Meeting Agent: Silences your phone during meetings. Uses your Google Calendar to determine your meeting schedule.


• Drive Agent: Uses bluetooth to detect when you're in your car. Can automatically silence your phone, read your texts aloud, and respond to incoming texts to let them know you're driving.

The company says that they've got more agents in the works, potentially offering add-on agent "suites" tailored to certain use cases - one set that'd be good for school, one set that'd be good for work, etc. That way they can keep adding more functionality without complicating the core application.

If you're a battle-tested Android expert, Agent's tricks might not raise an eyebrow. "Pft, I've got Tasker!" you say. "And I rooted my imported HTC J One and flashed it with a custom rom that does all this ages ago."

For the less intense folks (read: most people) out there, though, Agent should hit a sweet spot. It's simple, it does exactly what it promises to do, and the setup is very straightforward and well thought out.

My one hesitation: while I normally hate when people say "But what if company X just decides to do this", it's a pretty valid concern here. With all of the data that Google gobbles up and pipes into Google Now, it's almost certain that they're tinkering away with similar concepts right this second.

Actually, it's not almost certain. It is certain. Google-owned Motorola has already released an app that they call Assist, which aims to do much of the same stuff that Agent does. As Egomotion co-founder Kulveer Taggar pointed out to me, Assist only works with a handful of Motorola phones, whereas Agent works on many, many Android phones. But Moto's handsets tend to be a test bed for Google (See: the always-listening "Okay Google" voice command debuting on the Moto X months before being integrated into Android 4.4). If the concept proves popular, how long will it be before Google starts tying such functionality right into the core of Android itself?

In the mean time, though, it seems like Egomotion is on to something: according to the company's stats, 95% of agents that get turned on, stay on.

The app, normally $1.99, is on sale for $0.99 for the Thanksgiving weekend.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zxknR6fukUY/

Ogio Hampton's women's tote bag review

I have spent the last two months toting around the Hampton's Women's Tote Bag from Utah-based OGIO International. I had not viewed their video before receipt, so was surprised at its hefty size when it arrived. As it turned out the size was not a problem because I had to fly to Florida twice and used it as my personal item–absolutely stuffed to the gills. OGIO lists the Hampton's capacity as 1000 cubic inches and its dimensions as 15"high by 16.5" wide and 4" deep, weighing in at 1.6 lbs, but it felt lighter to me.

This 900D Polyester button bedecked tote includes a variety of pockets. The healthy-sized main compartment includes a velcro-tabbed pocket with fleece lining for your 11" to 15" laptop. There's extra padding on both sides of the pocket, plus the bottom is padded, so you have protection against minor kicks and drops. As you can see in the photo below, the outside zippered area fits a variety of smaller items in specialized pockets, including space for an iPad or another tablet. My iPad in its leather Sena case even fit in the pocket, but I couldn't zip the pocket all the way. Thankfully OGIO had the foresight to install two zippers, so I could close each side of the pocket and leave just the top open. The Hampton fit everything I needed to carry and more.

Little square tabs with icons on them help you identify which pocket fits what. The outside pocket includes an iPad, a jewelry and pen tab. These cute details add to the bag's appeal. (You can see the tab just above the pens in the photo above.)

The inside of the Hampton also has two pockets on the bag's sides, one of which sports a charger tab. Neither is big enough for a water bottle, even though that's what is stated on the site; plus I'm never comfortable putting a bottle of liquid where it can drip onto an electronic device. A medium sized fleece-lined zippered pocket can be used for your iPhone or iPod.

You can order the bag in Black, Emerald (looks more like a clover color), Terra (a brownish gray), Red, Tide (a dark aqua), or Yellow. I tested a Tide one and received a few compliments on the color of the bag from strangers.

All the bags have a polka dotted lining, even though that is not what OGIO shows on their product page photographs. Polka dots are not exactly fashionable these days, but the fabric has a metallic finish which reflects light. This helps you find things near the bottom of the bag. As one user noted on the site, the dots give it a more sporty look instead of a professional look.

The Good Bits

• Heavy metal zipper tabs, but the actual zipper is plastic, not metal.


• Even though the handle has no special padding, it was very comfortable on my shoulder. In one airport, I think I walked almost a mile from disembarking to the baggage claim. Even with a good 15lbs of content the bag did not dig into my shoulder at all, that was a pleasant surprise.


• I crammed the full bag under the airline seat(s) in front of me on four flights and the bag still looks as good as the day I took off the wrapper.


• The material seems to shed dirt.


• Felt liners in pockets made for electronic equipment.

The Areas That Need Improvement

• The cloth zipper pulls are simply knotted and one of them fell off the first day I used the bag.


• The three tab closure pockets on the outside of the bag do not close securely. The longest one has the fleece lining, suitable for a small iOS device, but the device isn't secured. The two smaller pockets on the other side of the bag only seem suitable for business cards.


• I wish Ogio had made made one of the outside pockets large enough to hold a water bottle, which would have been more useful.


• The decorative bow/belt that circles the top of the bag is only for show. It would be showy and useful if it was attached so that the belt could be used to slide the bag onto a suitcase handle for easy rolling around an airport.


• The bottom is padded, but not reinforced in such a way as to make the bag stand upright. It fell over every time I put it down, although I suspect weight distribution impacts this issue.

Is the Hampton's Women's Tote Bag worth the $70 price tag?

Even with the Hampton's minor design issues, the bag is well-made. The seams are all reinforced and no stray threads appeared on the bag itself. The belt stitching is coming undone, but the belt is easy to remove. I found the bag for a slightly lower price on a number of sites, and I think it's definitely worth the $62 price tag, which is the lowest I found. The lifetime warranty adds that extra bit of confidence to your purchase also.

It is always a gamble buying any kind of carry bag or purse for your special friend, because of individual tastes in bags. I do not think I would have picked it for myself on first look, but after using it, I am impressed with its functionality, especially as an airline personal carry-on. The Hampton's Women's Tote is more comfortable for me to carry than computer bags I have with specially padded shoulder straps. So, add a little style to your computer-using friend's life and give it a go!

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/ogio-hamptons-womens-tote-bag-review/

Daily Deals for November 29, 2013, featuring the Mac Variety Bundle #BlackFriday

It's time to save some of that hard-earned cash with our Daily Deals, featuring exclusive TUAW Deals, a handy list from Dealnews and our own handpicked iOS and OS X selections.

TUAW's Daily Deals

The Mac Variety Bundle 5.0 [On sale for $39, down from $401]

This hand-picked Mac bundle includes 8 TOP apps valued at $401 – for a very limited time, you can get all of them for $39! This Variety Bundle 5.0 features top Mac software that is beneficial to just about anyone:

• Flux 4 ($140): Flux is an advanced XHTML and CSS Web design software


• Back In Focus ($100): Back In Focus is an application allowing you to refocus blurry images


• Sharepod ($20): Sharepod allows users to transfer music and playlists from your iPhone or iPad to iTunes


• Lucid ($55): Add advanced capabilities to your webpages


• Folx ($20): Split downloads in threads, resume interrupted downloads, efficiently manage and organize downloads.


• X-Mirage ($16): Mirror your iOS devices on your Mac


• Tidy Up ($30): Convert and download videos to enjoy anywhere


• Airy ($20): YouTube video downloader and audio extractor

Save 90% on The Mac Variety Bundle 5.0 at TUAW Deals.

The Atlas Sky Headphones [On sale for $64.99, down from $100]

If you're serious about your music, you don't mess around when it comes to headphones. Luckily, neither does MEElectronics.

The Atlas headphones are a pure combination of cutting-edge technology and advanced materials designed to provide both a stylish and stereophonic audio experience.

SPECIAL LAUNCH PROMOTION: These bad boys are hot off the production line, so grab this discount while you can.

Save 35% on the Atlas Sky headphones at TUAW Deals.

Deals from Dealnews

• BrandsMart USA: [TVs] Panasonic 50" 600Hz Plasma HDTV for $200 in BrandsMart stores


• MacMall: [Electronics] MacMall Early Door Busters Sale: Up to $499 off Macs, iPads, storage (updated)


• Other World Computing: [Computer Accessories] OWC Garage Sale: Deals from $1 on RAM, accessories, computers, more


• Best Buy: [iPad] Apple iPad Air 16GB WiFi Tablet for $450 + free shipping, others up to $70 off


• Target: [TVs] Element 50" 1080p Widescreen LED LCD HDTV for $229 in Target stores


• BeLight Software: [Mac Software] BeLight Software Black Friday Sale: 50% off select Mac software


• MegaMacs: [MacBook] Refurbished Apple MacBook Pro 15" Laptops from $580 + $2 s&h


• Case-Mate.com: [iPhone Cases] Case-Mate coupon: 40% off sitewide + free shipping


• MegaMacs: [Mac Pro] Refurb Apple Mac Pro Xeon Quad-Core 3GHz Workstation for $450 + $2 s&h


• MegaMacs: [MacBook Air] Refurb MacBook Air Core i5 Dual 12" Laptop w/ 64GB SSD for $550 + $2 s&h


• MegaMacs: [Mac Pro] Refurbished Mac Pro Xeon Quad-Core 2.8GHz Workstation for $500 + $2 s&h


• TigerDirect: [iPhone Cases] Case Mate Barely There Case for iPhone 5 / 5S for $0 after rebate + $4 s&h

iOS Software Discounts

• 
  

  String Theory: a Word Game [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $1.99] Love word games? Still waiting on your friends? String Theory: a Word Game challenges players to spell as many words as they can before time runs out.

  
  


• 
  

  TodoMovies [iPhone; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] TodoMovies is the easiest and best way to manage movies you want to watch.

  
  


• 
  

  Blur Studio [iPhone; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Remix photos to create stunning personal wallpapers that feel right at home in iOS 7.

  
  


• 
  

  Readdle [iOS; Category: Productivity; On sale for 50% off] All Readdle apps are on sale for 50% titles include Scanner Pro, Printer Pro for iPad, Printer Pro for iPhone, Calendars 5, PDF Expert for iPad, PDF Expert for iPhone and PDF Converter.

  
  


• 
  

  Phlo [iOS Universal; Category: Reference; On sale for $1.99, down from $2.99] Type once, search everywhere. Launch the app, type your search, and find what you're looking for on any search engine.

  
  


• 
  

  Localscope [iPhone; Category: Navigation; On sale for $1.99, down from $2.99] Localscope is a window to your world that lets you explore your surroundings like never before.

  
  


• 
  

  Polaris Office [iOS Universal; Category: Business; On sale for $0.99, down from $3.99] POLARIS Office is a mobile office solution that allows users to view/edit MS Office documents on iPhone/iPad. Users can view/edit text files and view .pdf and .hwp files.

  
  


• 
  

  Skip-bo [iOS Universal; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99]Skip-Bo, the popular family card game, officially licensed by Mattel is now in the App Store! Test your skills, get into the action and place all your cards in sequential order.

  
  


• 
  

  Infinity Blade [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $5.99] From Epic Games' award-winning studio, ChAIR Entertainment, comes Infinity Blade, a new sword-fighting action game developed exclusively for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

  
  


• 
  

  Plex [iOS Universal; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $1.99, down from $4.99] With Plex, you can stream your music, videos and photos from your home computers running Plex Media Server (available from http://www.plexapp.com/) and access content from a wide range of channels.

  
  


• 
  

  Toca Builders [iOS Universal; Category: Educations; Now free, down from $1.99] Join your new builder friends on an island far away and create a whole new world with blocks. Jump, walk, roll and rotate the builders to use their unique skills, and they will help to build whatever you can imagine! Apple's App of the week.

  
  

OS X Software Discounts

• 
  

  QuickRes [OS X; Category: Utilities; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] QuickRes is the best way to switch between screen resolutions on your Mac.

  
  


• 
  

  iSmartClock [OS X; Category: Utilities; Now free, down from $2.99] iSmartClock with Full Screen and Mouse Detection is a very special clock for your Mac.

  
  


• 
  

  Readkit [OS X; Category: News; On sale for $1.99, down from $6.99] ReadKit is a full-featured read-later and RSS client that supports services from Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Pinboard, Delicious, Feedly, Fever, NewsBlur, Feedbin and Feed Wrangler and has built-in RSS capabilities.

  
  


• 
  

  Lost Souls: Enchanted Paintings (Full) [OS X; Category: Games; Now free, down from $6.99] Save a missing boy and immerse yourself in this breathtaking adventure.

  
  


• 
  

  Appy Fridays [OS X; Category: Various; $9.99] Get Holiday Bundle for $11.99, which includes Librarian Pro 3, iTunes Data Recovery and Patterno. The Holiday bundle is available till December 6, 2013.

  
  

Note: All prices are USD and subject to change. Some deals may expire quickly. TUAW is not responsible for third-party deals and cannot guarantee availability or quality of any particular product at a specific price.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/daily-deals-for-november-29-2013-featuring-the-mac-variety-bun/

Mac 101: An introduction to keyboard shortcuts in Safari for Mac

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

A long time friend of mine, who is also a long-time Windows user, has recently bought a MacBook Air. Like any transition, it's not been without its hiccups. But he's really pleased with with his new purchase. He's also a first time user of Safari, so I've been showing him a few keyboard shortcuts to make browsing the web a lot easier.

There are many helpful keyboard shortcuts to be found in Safari. Some simple ones are opening a new tab by hitting the command key (cmd) and T, so cmd+t. Another one is jumping straight to a bookmark by hitting cmd and a number key correspondingly assigned to your bookmarks (more details here). For instance, If BBC News is your third bookmark, hit cmd+3 to jump straight there.

Here are a few I regularly use:

• Cycle through open tabs by hitting cmd+shift+left arrow (or right arrow).


• Cmd+click a link to open that link in a new tab. Cmd+alt+click to open a link in a new window.


• Cmd+w to close the tab your in. Cmd+z to undo the last tab closed. Cmd+r to refresh a tab


• Shift+click a link to save a link to Reading List.

There are loads more. I came across Shortcutworld.com, which has 58 keyboard shortcuts for Safari.

With all these shortcuts, some are unusually placed, like adding a bookmark using cmd+d (why not b?), or viewing the downloads folder with alt+cmd+l. You'd think the key D would be for downloads, but sadly, no! Fortunately, you can customize Safari keyboard shortcuts (as well as any other Mac app) to just about any way you'd like by going to keyboard preferences in System Preferences.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/mac-101-an-introduction-to-keyboard-shortcuts-in-safari-for-mac/

Black Friday Online Sales Up 9 Percent; Mobile Is 37 Percent Of All Traffic And 21 Percent Of All Purchases

After a strong Thanksgiving holiday push in e-commerce spending, Black Friday online sales are already up 9 percent in 2013 over the same period last year.

The data, from IBM's Benchmark real-time reporting unit, covers 800 online retailers and millions of transactions. As of noon ET today, the average order value was $142.33. That compares to the average order value of $127.59 from yesterday.

Mobile shopping continues to grow, as mobile traffic accounted for 37 percent of all online traffic, up 36 percent compared to the same period last year. Mobile sales remained strong, reaching 21 percent of all online sales.Smartphones drove 24.5 percent of all online traffic, compared to tablets at 12.2 percent, making it the browsing device of choice. When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove 13.2 percent of all online sales, more than one and a half times that of smartphones, which accounted for 7.8 percent. Tablet users also averaged $137.55 per order, versus smartphone users, who averaged $118.33 per order.

By smartphone OS, iOS was almost four and a half times higher than Android, driving 17.5 percent vs. 4 percent for Android. On average, iOS users spent $131.52 per order compared to $113.13 for Android users. iOS also led as a component of overall traffic with 25.8 percent vs. 11 percent for Android.

In terms of social, shoppers referred from Facebook averaged $93.73 per order, versus Pinterest referrals, which drove $103.30 per order. However, Facebook referrals converted sales at a rate more than twice that of Pinterest referrals.

A 7 percent increase in sales is a modest jump, considering that U.S. e-commerce spending last year on Black Friday was $1.042 billion, an increase of 26 percent from 2012. Black Friday online sales actually surpassed $1 billion for the first time last year. But comScore is forecasting double-digit growth in both desktop e-commerce and m-commerce spending for the holiday season. It's still early in the day, however, and the West Coast is just waking up. We'll update this post with numbers through the day.

Photo credit/Flickr/myeralan

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4JGC-KMbN8o/

This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: PS4, Xbox One, And The Sense 3D Scanner

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. What are you thankful for?

My list is short, but sweet: I'm thankful for you guys, gaming consoles, and 3d scanners.

This week, on a very grateful episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets podcast, we look into the differences between the PS4 and the Xbox One, the latest generations of console gaming. Meanwhile, John's excited about the new Sense scanner from 3D Systems, even though he can't stop calling it “Scene”.

For our phone fans out there, we're also chatting about the Moto G smartphone.

We discuss all this and more on this week's episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, and Darrell Etherington, and Chris Velazco.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.

You can subscribe to the show via RSS.

Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Rick Barr.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/AyGWJPuMaRY/

Instagram says Thanksgiving 2013 was its busiest day so far, but fails to share exact figures

Instagram today announced that Thanksgiving 2013 in the US was “the busiest day on Instagram so far,” thanks to a massive flood of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah-related photos and videos. Unfortunately, the company failed to share exact figures, suggesting that if any records were broken, they weren’t huge.

That’s a big contrast to last year’s announcement, in which Instagram said Thanksgiving 2012 in the US broke multiple records in addition to being the busiest day for the mobile photo sharing service ever. This year, the “busiest” adjective is repeated again, but the closest we have to specifics is this vague sentence: “We saw record usage as Instagrammers shared a heaping help of holiday cheer.”

Last year, the Facebook-owned company said it saw the number of shared photos more than double from the day before. This year, apparently nothing close to that happened.

There are many potential explanations for a lack of new numbers. While Instagram is still the leader in the mobile photo sharing space, it’s no longer way ahead of the competition, like it was last year, for one simple reason: there’s more competition.

The Facebook-owned company now has to deal with Vine and Snapchat. Add to that all the various messaging apps that support sharing media files, and competing for mobile users’ photo and video time gets even harder.

Instagram’s press page also hasn’t been updated since Thanksgiving: the social network still sits at 16 billion photos total, with over 55 million photos uploaded each day. Facebook averages about 350 million photos uploaded daily (although that number refers to Q4 2012). Neither service breaks out video numbers.

Update: There was some confusion as to whether yesterday was Instagram’s biggest day so far or just the biggest Thanksgiving so far. Instagram confirmed with TNW that “yesterday was our busiest day ever.”

See also – Instagram confirms ‘occasional’ in-feed image and video ads are coming to the US in the next couple of months and After launching online profiles, Instagram now lets you view your feed, like photos, and comment on the Web

Top Image Credit: Thomas Coes/Getty Images

via The Next Web http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/kktxdXNtIPY/

Thanksgiving 2013 mobile shopping: PayPal sees 91% increase, eBay sees usage up nearly 130% and orders up 127%

PayPal and eBay today revealed some statistics for yesterday’s holiday craze. Between 2012 and 2013, both companies saw big jumps, although not as large as between 2011 and 2012.

Compared to Thanksgiving 2012, the eBay-owned company saw a 91 percent increase in consumers shopping through PayPal mobile around the world. eBay itself meanwhile saw usage and orders grow nearly 130 percent 127 percent, respectively.

Last year, PayPal saw a 173 percent increase and eBay saw a 133 percent jump. While eBay’s numbers seem only slightly lower, PayPal’s growth has definitely slowed for Thanksgiving 2013, although the company did say mobile third-party verification (TPV) increased by 114.7 percent compared to Thanksgiving 2012.

PayPal also revealed consumers in the US mainly took to their mobile devices to shop throughout the day. That being said, the busiest time was between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM PST (10:00 PM EST and 11:00 PM EST), presumably after dinner was well-settled in consumers’ stomachs.

eBay meanwhile revealed free shipping appeared to be the promotion of choice for consumers shopping at eBay Enterprise retailers on Thanksgiving Day 2013. 72 percent of orders included free shipping, an increase of 48 percent compared to Thanksgiving Day 2012.

For those who don’t know, eBay Enterprise manages ecommerce for leading retailers and brands, including Toys “R” Us, Levi’s, Sports Authority, Polo Ralph Lauren, and GNC. It was previously called GSI Commerce, but eBay rebranded it two years after the acquisition.

Unlike last year, the company is not breaking out GSI numbers from eBay numbers. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise: eBay and eBay Commerce have the same goal of selling as many products as possible to consumers.

See also – eBay Exact launches on iOS, lets you buy 3D-printed products from MakerBot, Sculpteo, and Hot Pop Factory and eBay launches “My Gadgets”, an easy way to catalog, value and one day sell your gadgets

Top Image Credit: flippnjj

via The Next Web http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/3kDE8FXpJ-A/

Brazilian government asks why Apple charges its citizens in U.S. dollars

Brazil's Consumer Protection Secretariat recently wrote a formal letter to Apple inquiring why the company charges consumers on its Brazilian iTunes storefront in U.S. dollars as opposed to the Brazilian real.

Now the iTunes Store first debuted in Brazil, and an assortment of other Latin American countries, back in December of 2011. That being the case, one can only wonder why the Brazilian government waited nearly two years before deciding to take a look at this particular issue. According to the India Times, product pricing in Brazil, as a matter of law, must be priced using local currency rates.

Apple reportedly has 10 days to respond to the government inquiry lest it face a fine of $2.6 million.

One looming question remains: Should Apple find itself subject to a fine, will it pay the fee with dollars or with reals.

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/brazilian-government-asks-why-apple-charges-its-citizens-in-u-s/

Play Angry Birds Go! today, ahead of December 11 release date

If you're hankering for some Angry Birds racing action and simply can't wait for the official December 11 release of Angry Birds Go!, you can do a bit of virtual relocation and play the game right now. We showed you a similar workaround with the release of Tiny Death Star, and since Go! has been released in New Zealand already, the same App Store trickery works here as well. Here's how to do it:

1. Go to the App Store using your iPhone or iPad.


2. Scroll to the bottom of the "Featured" page and click your Apple ID.


3. On the menu that pops up, click "View Your Apple ID."


4. A page will appear with all of your information on it. Click "Country/Region" and change it to "New Zealand."


5. Agree to the terms and conditions.


6. Now you'll see a page with all of your billing information on it. Delete your credit card info (the app is free so you won't need it, and since we'll be changing your address to somewhere down under, it won't work anyway).


7. Next we need to give you a New Zealand location. Change your "Suburb" to Wellington and your "Post Code" to 6011, then click "Next."


8. You should now be able to search for "Angry Birds Go" and download the app for free.


9. After downloading, switch your information back to whatever it was previously, including your credit card information.

After returning your information back to normal you'll be able to play the game just as you would if it were released in your region, including in-app purchases.

A few things to remember when using this technique: When the game is released in your region, you'll want to download the localized version as well. Any progress you make on the New Zealand version of the game will likely be deleted when you change to the local version. If you choose not to download the local version, you'll likely need to change your account back to New Zealand to download updates for the game.

This workaround also won't work if you have an iTunes Match account or any credit on your iTunes account, as those items need to be removed before changing regions.

Essentially, this trick is simply a way for some of us to preview the game early, so don't go investing a hundred bucks on in-app purchases. Enjoy!

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/play-angry-birds-go-today-ahead-of-december-11-release-date/

Judge Lucy Koh dismisses location tracking lawsuit against Apple

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh earlier this week dismissed a lawsuit against Apple which alleged that the the company had illegally tracked and transmitted user location data. The suit was initially filed in 2011 by a group of plaintiffs who argued that Apple was in violation of its own privacy policy and that they, as a result, over-paid for their iPhones.

Specifically, the plaintiffs argued that in collecting and transmitting location data without user consent, Apple diminished the overall value of their devices by degrading its "battery, bandwidth, and storage resources."

In dismissing the lawsuit, Koh explained that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they, in fact, suffered any tangible harm as a result of Apple's actions.

The ruling reads in part:

Plaintiffs must be able to provide some evidence that they saw one or more of Apple's alleged misrepresentations, that they actually relied on those misrepresentations, and that they were harmed thereby.

While the iDevice Plaintiffs identify numerous purported misrepresentations and argue that they relied on them in purchasing their iPhones, the evidentiary record is devoid of "specific facts" to support Plaintiffs' assertions. Critically, none of the Plaintiffs presents evidence that he or she even saw, let alone read and relied upon, the alleged misrepresentations contained in the Apple Privacy Policies, SLAs, or App Store Terms and Conditions, either prior to purchasing his or her iPhone, or at any time thereafter.

As a final point, Reuters relays that this case is just one part of a much broader case that "consolidates 19 related lawsuits."

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/judge-lucy-koh-dismisses-location-tracking-lawsuit-against-apple/

Best deals on iOS and OS X software for Black Friday weekend

x

It's Black Friday, which means there are deals on hardware, accessories and even software. Check out our list below of some of the best discounts on iOS and OS X software.

iOS Discounts

• 
  

  FlickStackr for Flickr [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] FlickStackr brings Flickr photo sharing to the iPad.

  
  


• 
  

  TodoMovies [iPhone; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] TodoMovies is the easiest and best way to manage movies you want to watch.

  
  


• 
  

  Blur Studio [iPhone; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Remix photos to create stunning personal wallpapers that feel right at home in iOS 7.

  
  


• 
  

  Readdle [iOS; Category: Productivity; On sale for 50% off] All Readdle apps are on sale for 50% titles include Scanner Pro, Printer Pro for iPad, Printer Pro for iPhone, Calendars 5, PDF Expert for iPad, PDF Expert for iPhone and PDF Converter.

  
  


• 
  

  Filterstorm Neue [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $3.99] Filterstorm Neue provides you with all the photo editing tools you need; everything from powerful masking tools to simple pre-made filters.

  
  


• 
  

  The Elements in Action [iOS Universal; Category: Reference; On sale for $1.99, down from $3.99] The periodic table comes to life with 79 video explorations of the weird, wonderful, and sometimes alarming properties of the elements.

  
  


• 
  

  Phlo [iOS Universal; Category: Reference; On sale for $1.99, down from $2.99] Type once, search everywhere. Launch the app, type your search, and find what you're looking for on any search engine.

  
  


• 
  

  Localscope [iPhone; Category: Navigation; On sale for $1.99, down from $2.99] Localscope is a window to your world that lets you explore your surroundings like never before.

  
  


• 
  

  MyScript Notes Mobile [iPad; Category: Productivity; On sale for $1.99, down from $7.99] MyScript Notes Mobile, the application which turns your iPad tablet into a real library of virtual notebooks.

  
  


• 
  

  Downcast [iOS Universal; Category: News; On sale for $0.99, down from $2.99] Download and listen to your favorite podcasts directly from your iOS device without the need to sync with iTunes.

  
  


• 
  

  A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving [iOS Universal; Category: Books; On sale for $2.99, down from $5.99] This holiday season, join Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang around the table for a (very!) unique Thanksgiving dinner.

  
  


• 
  

  Frax [iPhone; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Frax raises the fractal in 3D height, uses complex color gradients to smoothly tint and shade them, adds two light sources for glossy reflections and infinitely scaleable chaotic textures - all in all using almost 100 parameters and controls.

  
  


• 
  

  Frax HD [iPad; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $1.99, down from $3.99] Frax raises the fractal in 3D height, uses complex color gradients to smoothly tint and shade them, adds two light sources for glossy reflections and infinitely scaleable chaotic textures - all in all using almost 100 parameters and controls.

  
  


• 
  

  MoneyWiz - Personal Finance [iPhone; Category: Finance; On sale for $0.99, down from $4.99] Have all your accounts, transactions, budgets and bills in one place.

  
  


• 
  

  Don't Let the Pigeon [iOS Universal; Category: Books; On sale for $0.99, down from $5.99] "Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App!" lets you create your own Pigeon stories with your pal, Mo Willems. Just follow as the Bus Driver asks you for your ideas-then shake the Pigeon.

  
  


• 
  

  Polaris Office [iOS Universal; Category: Business; On sale for $0.99, down from $3.99] POLARIS Office is a mobile office solution that allows users to view/edit MS Office documents on iPhone/iPad. Users can view/edit text files and view .pdf and .hwp files.

  
  


• 
  

  TextTool [iOS Universal; Category: Productivity; On sale for $2.99, down from $4.99] TextTool is a text editor that makes it easy to manipulate text through multiple, built-in, powerful transformation options.

  
  


• 
  

  Screens [iOS Universal; Category: Utilities; On sale for $9.99, down from $19.99] Leave your computer behind and travel light! Screens is a beautiful, yet powerful Screen Sharing and VNC client that lets you connect back to your Mac, Windows or Linux PC from the comfort of your living room, the corner coffee shop or anywhere in the world.

  
  


• 
  

  Write for iPad [iPad; Category: Productivity; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Writing. Automated Dropbox/iCloud Syncing. Markdown. Fastest Sharing. Free Mac Addon. Beautiful Design. Love.

  
  


• 
  

  FileCentral [iPad; Category: Business; On sale for $0.99, down from $6.99] FileCentral will enable you to view read and display large PDF, Office & iWork documents.

  
  


• 
  

  DEVONthink To Go [iOS Universal; Category: Productivity; On sale for $9.99, down from $14.99] DEVONthink To Go is a COMPANION to DEVONthink and DEVONnote for the Mac.

  
  


• 
  

  Chordion [iPad; Category: Music; On sale for $0.99, down from $3.99] Chordion is a fun new way to make music on the iPad. Choose chords with one hand and play melodies with the other - never hit a wrong note.

  
  


• 
  

  Actions for iPad [iPad; Category: Productivity; On sale for $0.99, down from $3.99] Advanced but incredibly simple to use, Actions is a revolutionary app that lets you interact more naturally with your computer, thanks to your beloved iPad.

  
  


• 
  

  Delivery Status touch [iOS Universal; Category: Utilities; On sale for $2.99, down from $4.99] Delivery Status helps you keep track of all your packages, so you always know when they're going to arrive. The main view shows the latest status of all your packages, and counts down to the estimated delivery date.

  
  


• 
  

  Gneo [iOS Universal; Category: Productivity; On sale for $4.99, down from $9.99] Gneo helps you take action with your to-dos by prioritising all the things you need to get done.

  
  


• 
  

  BeatMaker 2 [iOS Universal; Category: Music; On sale for $4.99, down from $19.99]Combining music production tools that were behind the success of countless artists, BeatMaker 2 is a powerful, easy-to-use composition interface for amateurs and professionals alike.

  
  


• 
  

  Pinner - social bookmarking [iOS Universal; Category: News; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] A delightful app for managing your Pinboard.in bookmarks.

  
  


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  Filtatron [iOS Universal; Category: Music; On sale for $0.99, down from $7.99] Filtatron can act as a source, a destination, or a filter for audio from other compatible apps.

  
  


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  Recordium [iOS Universal; Category: Business; On sale for $0.99, down from $4.99] Recordium is a powerful yet elegant recording app designed for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

  
  


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  Terminology 3 [iOS Universal; Category: Reference; On sale for $1.99, down from $2.99] Terminology is a browser for the English language – part dictionary/thesaurus and part research tool.

  
  


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  Money for iPad [iPad; Category: Finance; On sale for $0.99, down from $4.99] Manage your personal finances in the most comprehensive manner with Money.

  
  


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  1Password [iOS Universal; Category: Productivity; On sale for $9.99, down from $17.99] Every day there are new passwords to remember. They are often forgotten. Using weak passwords or re-using them makes it easy to remember, but criminals love it when you do this. 1Password solves all these problems.

  
  


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  Spark Camera [iPhone; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Shoot, edit and share beautiful movies in seconds with Spark.

  
  


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  Plex [iOS Universal; Category: Entertainment; On sale for $1.99, down from $4.99] With Plex, you can stream your music, videos and photos from your home computers running Plex Media Server (available from http://www.plexapp.com/) and access content from a wide range of channels.

  
  


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  SlowCam [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $1.99] Record amazing slow motion videos in real time with SlowCam.

  
  


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  Videon [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $2.99]Videon contains all the features necessary to record great videos - from capture to editing to viewing.

  
  


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  HDR [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $1.99] Capture High-Dynamic-Range photographs with HDR.

  
  


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  Elasticam [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $1.99] Turn any photo into a surreal masterpiece with Elasticam. Stretch, squeeze, pinch and prod your prints to create magical effects with ease.

  
  


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  Noise Master [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $1.99] Noise Master is the fastest, most effective app to remove noise from photos.

  
  


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  Slow Shutter [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $1.99] Capture Long-Exposure photographs with Slow Shutter.

  
  


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  Photoristic HD [iPad; Category: Photography & Video; On sale for $0.99, down from $4.99] Photoristic HD is the ultra fast photo editor. It implements unique algorithms that allow to preview and apply photo effects & filters in a matter of seconds. Price will rise gradually over the weekend, until the sale ends on Tuesday.

  
  


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  Tap & Edit [iOS Universal; Category: Productivity; Now free, down from $0.99] Tap & Edit makes creating, designing and sharing documents a snap.

  
  


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  Sync Photo to Storage [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $0.99] Sync Photos to Storage is a universal app for iPhone and iPad. It allows you to browse and save new content from Camera Roll to the selected computers or Dropbox.

  
  


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  SkySafari 3 [iOS Universal; Category: Education; Now free, down from $2.99] SkySafari 3 accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one hundred years in the past or future.

  
  


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  SkySafari Plus [iOS Universal; Category: Education; On sale for $9.99, down from $14.99] SkySafari 3 accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one hundred years in the past or future.

  
  


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  SkySafari Pro [iOS Universal; Category: Education; On sale for $29.99, down from $39.99] SkySafari 3 accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one hundred years in the past or future.

  
  


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  Prizmo [iOS Universal; Category: Business; On sale for $4.99, down from $9.99] Prizmo is a universal photo-based scanner app that lets you scan and recognize text documents, business cards, and images, and then export them as PDF/Text, vCard, or JPEG/PNG.

  
  


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  Art Authority for iPad [iPad; Category: Reference; On sale for $4.99, down from $9.99] Art Authority for iPad transports you to an enthralling, real-world art museum with works by 1000+ major western artists.

  
  


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  Art Authority K-12 for iPad](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/art-authority-k-12-for-ipad/id573199638?mt=8) [iPad; Category: Reference; On sale for $3.99, down from $7.99] Art Authority for iPad transports you to an enthralling, real-world art museum with works by 1000+ major western artists. Kid friendly edition.

  
  


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  StreetPilot Onboard iPhone USA [iPhone; Category: Navigation; On sale for $24.99, down from $49.99] Garmin StreetPilot® Onboard U.S.A. and give your iPhone® or iPad® the best in GPS navigation with photoReal junction views, 3D buildings, speed/red light camera alerts and more.

  
  


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  StreetPilot Onboard iPhone North America [iPhone; Category: Navigation; On sale for $29.99, down from $39.99] Download Garmin StreetPilot® Onboard North America and give your iPhone® or iPad® the best in GPS navigation with photoReal junction views, 3D buildings, speed/red light camera alerts and more.

  
  


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  NAVIGON iOS USA [iOS Universal; Category: Navigation; On sale for $24.99, down from $49.99] With NAVIGON you can turn your iPhone or iPad into a fully functional mobile navigation system.

  
  


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  NAVIGON iOS North America [iOS Universal; Category: Navigation; On sale for $29.99, down from $59.99] With NAVIGON you can turn your iPhone or iPad into a fully functional mobile navigation system.

  
  


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  NAVIGON iOS MyRegion [iOS Universal; Category: Navigation; On sale for $14.99, down from $29.99] With NAVIGON you can turn your iPhone or iPad into a fully functional mobile navigation system.

  
  


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  Wonderful Color House [iPad; Category: Books; On sale for $0.99, down from $2.99] Travel with Tullik from the cold white wilds of the North Pole to the warm colorful southern summer ... and a wonderful, colorful house he can truly call home.

  
  


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  Time Planner [iPhone; Category: Productivity; In-app purchase now on sale for $1.99, down from $4.99] TIME Planner is an activity planning app that brings diversity into your everyday life. It helps you organize and fill your day with tasks of different nature

  
  

OS X Discounts

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  Art Authority for Mac [OS X; Category: Reference; On sale for $4.99, down from $9.99] Art Authority transports you to an enthralling, real-world art museum with works by 1000+ major western artists.

  
  


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  Prizmo[OS X; Category: Business; On sale for $24.99, down from $49.99] , Prizmo is the key for scanning and performing OCR. It works with pictures taken with your iPhone, iPad, or digital camera, with documents coming from connected or Wi-Fi scanners, even with screenshots

  
  


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  SkySafari 1.8 [OS X; Category: Education; Now free, down from $14.99] SkySafari 3 accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one hundred years in the past or future.

  
  


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  SkySafari Plus [OS X; Category: Education; On sale for $14.99, down from $19.99] SkySafari 3 accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one hundred years in the past or future.

  
  


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  Phlo [OS X; Category: Reference; On sale for $1.99, down from $3.99] Type once, search everywhere. Launch the app, type your search, and find what you're looking for on any search engine.

  
  

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via TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/29/best-deals-on-ios-and-os-x-software-for-black-friday-weekend/