Google Apps Marketplace opens for business, for business

Google’s certainly made some enterprise inroads with Google Apps, and now it’s open the road for other cloud-based service providers to build on that success: it’s launching Google Apps Marketplace to sell third-party web apps that integrate with the Apps suite. The apps are sold as a subscription, with both monthly and annual pricing, and the billing is all handled by Google. Since it’s all targeted at the enterprise, the apps themselves are pretty dry — we’re talking notables like Intuit Online Payroll, eFax, and TripIt — but it’s pretty easy to see how Google could build a similar consumer-level marketplace into Gmail and Google Calendar sometime in the future. And then? Skynet. Video after the break.

Continue reading Google Apps Marketplace opens for business, for business

Google Apps Marketplace opens for business, for business originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents

We have some news on the app store that Meizu announced for the M8 a while back. The official name is apparently MStore, and it is indeed open for business with its first paid app, Mr. Jelly, going for about 29 cents (we believe it’s a productivity tool for managing your, um, jelly). If that sounds familiar, it is — the game is a port of an iPhone App Store gem. Regardless of its somewhat KIRFish nature, we do wish Meizu (its app developers) all the best. Now, when are we going to get Super Monkey Ball for this thing?

Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted on March 9, 2010 at 9:20 am by Joseph L. Flatley · Permalink · Comments Closed
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PocketGear acquires Handango, becomes world’s largest cross-platform app store

Now this is intriguing. PocketGear has just acquired its former competitor Handango in the cross-platform app store space, and can now claim a library of software that places it right alongside Apple’s App Store in terms of the pure number of applications on offer. PocketGear has been busy providing the infrastructure for things like Samsung’s TouchWiz widget store and Palm’s Software Store for a while, whereas Handango used to be the largest independent app store out there, and their consolidated catalog will offer more than 140,000 applications on all the major non-Apple platforms: Android, BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian, and WinMo. The number of actually useful apps has not been disclosed, but we love the idea of an independent competitor nudging the proprietary stores along so let’s hope things go well for them. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading PocketGear acquires Handango, becomes world’s largest cross-platform app store

PocketGear acquires Handango, becomes world’s largest cross-platform app store originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted on February 23, 2010 at 3:00 am by Vladislav Savov · Permalink · Comments Closed
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Novatel shows off next-gen GPS-enabled MiFi, integrated ‘apps’ (video)

Novatel shows off next-gen GPS-enabled MiFi, integrated 'apps' (video)

If you haven’t freaked out and given up on MiFi after they were shown to be, well, a little bit vulnerable, good for you, because there’s good things in store. Novatel is working on a new revision of its routers with integrated GPS, USB charging, and what’s pledged to be better battery life. Perhaps most interesting among the revisions is firmware able to run Linux “apps” that display content within the MiFi’s admin webpage. Current apps are things like data usage and weather but the possibilities are endless — or slightly broader than weather and usage, at least. It’s unclear which (if any) of the current MiFi models will be also be blessed with this firmware update and its resplendent selection of homebrew widgets, but we do know that the new MiFi model will be hitting carriers sometime toward the middle of 2010 and will be selling unlocked around the end of the year.

Continue reading Novatel shows off next-gen GPS-enabled MiFi, integrated ‘apps’ (video)

Novatel shows off next-gen GPS-enabled MiFi, integrated ‘apps’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted on February 19, 2010 at 5:49 am by Tim Stevens · Permalink · Comments Closed
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Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device

Alright, we’ll leave all the zingers for you and our mercurial staff to deliver, and just use this space to dish some info on the hardware. Ivor Kovic, an emergency physician from Croatia, has recently demoed a new iPhone cradle that turns the already multifunctional handset into a CPR assistance device. By using an app titled Pocket CPR and the built-in accelerometer, he can get audio and visual feedback to tell him if he’s doing it correctly, while his basic (but awesome) cradle allows for longer CPR sessions if necessary. Check out the video after the break, then hit the comments with your finest witticisms.

Paul: “Come on Luke Wilson’s Career, stay with me now, you’re not going to die on me!”
Darren: “Man, I could really get a better look at what’s going on if this thing had a 9.7-inch IPS panel…”
Chris: “Everyone is either dying or staying alive these days, and we began to ask ourselves: is there room for something in the middle?”
Nilay: “He then died.”
Vlad: “Our other cradle also measures rhythm and depth, though its purpose isn’t entirely medicinal.”
Andy: “A rare case where a lack of multitasking is actually helpful to the task on hand.”
Thomas: “Can you stop dying for a second, I have to take this call.”
Joe: “This actually adds an intriguing level of complexity to Super Monkey Ball 2.”
Richard Lai: “Come on… COME ON!! Wait a tick… AT&T? No wonder it isn’t working. Dammit.”
Tim: “Looks like this guy’s heart (puts on sunglasses)… has dropped its last call.” Yeeeaaaaaahhhh…

Continue reading Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device

Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer to launch e-reader, app store, and Chrome OS netbook this year; wants to ‘change the Microsoft-Intel environment’

Man, Acer’s on the warpath. The world’s second-largest PC manufacturer seems hell-bent on radically changing the status quo, telling Bloomberg today that it’s “aggressively pursuing” Chrome OS “so there’s a change to the Microsoft-Intel environment,” with plans to be among the first to ship in Q3. That’s somewhat ahead of Google’s own schedule for reaching v1.0, so yeah, it’s definitely aggressive — and it also sounds like a strong hint towards an ARM-based Chrome OS machine in our future, but Acer wouldn’t confirm anything. Still, those are basically fightin’ words, especially since Acer’s framing the future as a choice between “either” Windows or “Google’s defined OS space.” Acer also promised to fully detail a 6-inch monochrome e-reader by June with an initial focus on European markets, and we’re also informed of a forthcoming free / cheap application store that will be compatible with Android, Windows Mobile, and, obviously, Chrome OS. And lest you thought Acer was ignoring the Apple tablet madness that permeates our world, we’re told that an Acer tablet is in the works, accompanied by the candid admission that the Taiwanese giant is waiting to see what Apple has in store before finalizing its own plans. Yep — things are getting a little nuts.

Acer to launch e-reader, app store, and Chrome OS netbook this year; wants to ‘change the Microsoft-Intel environment’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kindle’s active content given 100KB free monthly bandwidth allowance

We were wondering how Kindle’s impending active content (read: apps) would be harnessing that free Whispernet bandwidth. As it turns out, there’s just a smidgen allowed for gratis. According to the terms laid out by Amazon, there’s a 70 / 30 revenue split, with that smaller percentage going to Bezos and co. “net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB.” The price tiers is a little simpler: apps can be free if their download over 3G is less than 1MB and they use less than 100KB per month, per user. Apps between 1MB and 10MB require a one-time purchase fee that offsets the bandwidth usage, and likewise a subscription fee is needed for those that plan on allowing over 100KB of a monthly data streaming. (To put that in perspective, this post — just the copy — is 4KB. That image above is 120KB.) Anything over 10MB requires a download over WiFi, and the maximum file size is 100MB… and if anyone manages to justify a 100MB app that runs on a greyscale E Ink display, color us impressed.

Kindle’s active content given 100KB free monthly bandwidth allowance originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s App Store said to have 99.4 percent of all mobile app sales, more like 97.5

The latest research from Gartner indicates that, for the year 2009, only 16 million app sales were executed on mobile devices not bearing the infamous bitten apple logo. In reporting this data, Ars Technica inadvertently conflates Apple’s latest announcement of three billion apps downloaded with the notion of three billion apps sold and pegs the App Store’s market share at a whopping 99.4 percent — but more realistic calculations still show it to be somewhere in the vicinity of 97.5 percent. Going off estimates (obtained by GigaOM) that a quarter of App Store downloads are paid-for apps, and taking a rough figure of 2.5 billion downloads in 2009, leaves us with around 625 million app sales performed by Apple, which comfortably dwarfs all its competition. Considering the fact 18 months ago there wasn’t even an App Store to speak of — whereas today Cupertino is gobbling up the best part of $4.2 billion in annual mobile apps revenue — maybe you can now understand why we’re covering every tiny drip of info about that mythical tablet.

Apple’s App Store said to have 99.4 percent of all mobile app sales, more like 97.5 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Navigon announces MobileNavigator for Android and Windows Mobile

We’d heard that Navigon would be bringing navigation to Android, and here at CES it’s gone one better: MobileNavigator is coming to Android and Windows Mobile. The app will feature Navigon’s trademark Reality View Plus view and Lane Assistant Pro features on both platforms, and it’ll sell for $89 on WinMo starting now ($69 until Valentines Day), and launch for Android in the spring.

Navigon announces MobileNavigator for Android and Windows Mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted on January 7, 2010 at 3:20 pm by Nilay Patel · Permalink · Comments Closed
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Upcoming Haier Blu-ray players are as intriguing as they are cheap

We spotted Haier’s first U.S. entry into the Blu-ray player market luxuriating at Digital Experience following the company’s recent trend of surprisingly complete feature sets for low prices. The Broadcom-powered BDP100 and BDP200W are no great surprise, comparing closely with Best Buy’s recent Insignia players as Netflix streaming Blu-ray decks, the former without WiFi for $169 and the latter with wireless internet for $229. However they’re distinguished slightly by the addition of Pandora’s streaming music, plus plans to support apps/streaming from another provider or two around launch in the first quarter. What was promised but not shown this go round were some interesting features powered by the units Flash compatibility, we’ll be sure to check them out on the CES floor today and report back on the “Netflix 2.0″experience as well as its other products, including a new LED edge lit LCD line and Blu-ray/LCD combo TV with Netflix. For now, the press release and a couple of more images after the break.

Continue reading Upcoming Haier Blu-ray players are as intriguing as they are cheap

Upcoming Haier Blu-ray players are as intriguing as they are cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted on January 7, 2010 at 10:45 am by Richard Lawler · Permalink · Comments Closed
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