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Samsung to announce Galaxy S smartphone, content initiatives this week
We've just received a veritable cornucopia of information around Samsung's supposed announcements out at CTIA this week -- and seeing how this is the biggest wireless show the US has to offer, you might imagine that the reveals are fairly US-focused while still hanging onto some global relevance. Here's what we know: The company's so-called "Smart Life" philosophy for smartphone design and differentiation -- something we've heard referred to as S Life in the past, including here at CTIA -- will be formally introduced. It won't so much be a product or a smartphone platform (as far as we can tell) so much as an overarching strategy. A 1GHz applications processor will be announced as the "new standard" in Sammy's premium smartphone segment for 2010; in all likelihood, this is the Cortex A8-based core announced in the middle of last year. A huge content push will be announced (US market mercifully included) with full-length movies and shows that are "optimized" to take advantage of the company's new Super AMOLED displays. You'll also see some book and magazine deals get struck for straight-to-mobile delivery, but it sounds like we won't get the straight dope on how it'll all work (and who's involved, exactly) this week. Kicking off S Life from the hardware side will be the Galaxy S, Samsung's big phone announcement for the week. As far as we can tell, it'll be an Android device taking advantage of Super AMOLED and the company's homegrown 1GHz core -- and it'll be available in the US this year. That's all we've got so far, but Sammy's mobile prez J.K. Shin has a keynote tomorrow morning along with an event immediately afterward, so we expect to get this fleshed out in the next day or so. Stay tuned!
Wakoopa for iPhone keeps tabs on web apps
Reader Robert sent me a note to tell us that his startup site, Wakoopa (which, I was sorry to note, has nothing to do with Mario's enemies) has created a section specifically for (and compatible with) the iPhone.Wakoopa is a social network of sorts that lets you discuss and recommend different software applications for various platforms. If you like using Firefox, for example, you can discuss that and track your use of it, and your software preferences get displayed for anyone to see. Just like Slife, I'm thrilled by the information available here, but not so sure I want to participate myself.But the iPhone site is pretty useful as a directory. From the browser, it's a little slow to navigate through, but the real genius of it appears on the iPhone itself at i.wakoopa.com. As Robert told me, it's basically like Apple's web app directory, but easy to browse where you actually need to find and access web apps for the iPhone.The implementation on the iPhone works well, and if nothing else, you can bookmark just one page and be able to access all the popular apps right from there. These web apps still aren't any substitute for a real SDK, but you need something to hold you over until February, right? I think the stuff at the top of Wakoopa's list is about as sweet as this solution is going to get.
Slife updates interface, adds social networking in 1.3
We wrote about the 1.0 of Slife in February, and I thought it was a fascinating application-- there's nothing you look at more every single day than what you do with your own life, and yet here's a piece of software that lets you look at how you spend your time in a different, more objective way.And now they've sent word that Slife has entered version 1.3, with numerous additions to the interface. The program can now work in the background, and apparently it no longer has to scan your hard drive for all the different applications to track-- if a new app shows up in your usage, it'll start tracking it automatically. They've also added a few social networking options (which sounds like a better idea than an actual feature to me-- do I really want people knowing how much time I spend playing World of Warcraft?) with their Slifeshare service. You can track your friends' activities, even down to what app they're using at the moment.But while I'm personally not interested in completely sharing my pastimes (I'm sure there's an option to turn it off), I do really like the idea of the program, and I love the abilities it gives you to take a close look at exactly what you do on your computer when. Slife is available as a free trial (will track 3 apps), or as a full application for $34.
Slife 1.0 Awareness Browser
Slife is a rather unusual piece of software. I tried it out in its previous incarnation (Onlife), but it has now been released under a new name and seems considerably more polished. Its developer calls Slife an "awareness browser" which "let's you visualize and organize your computer activities like never before." Basically, Slife "observes" your use of applications like Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, Word, NetNewsWire, etc., and records what you're doing with them (e.g. what web pages you looked at, the text of your emails, what songs you listened to, etc.). You can then visualize these interactions in a variety of different ways (e.g. one visualization is a kind of scatterplot over time) and go back and see what you were doing on your computer at any given time. In other words, it's sort of like a global history of your computer use, which instead of merely recording what pages you've looked at in your browser, records what you were doing at any given time in a bunch of different applications. You can also search through all of this mess, to find things you were doing, but perhaps lost track of or forgot where you looked at them. Finally, SlifeLabs offers a subscription service called Slifeshare where "you can share your Slife activities such as browsing the web and listening to music with your friends, family or anyone you care about" (I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do that, but whatever). While something like this is definitely not going to appeal to everyone, Slife has a lot of potential to help you keep track of things you've lost and to understand better how you use your own computer. And since it's a free download, I think it's definitely worth a look.[Via MacMinute]
